Unto A Good Land

by Vilhelm Moberg

  Ulrika had changed, too, since people had changed their behavior toward her. Here she was no longer the parish whore. Here she was honored and treated like other women. Kristina was still bothered by the ugly words Ulrika liked to use, but now she knew they belonged to her old way of talking. The ugliest names invented for parts of men’s and women’s bodies, and for their conjugal acts, were part of the life she had led. The King of Alarum had taught them to her. But from Ulrika, Kristina learned that a person’s way of speaking had nothing to do with that person’s heart.

  Now at Lake Ki-Chi-Saga, she discovered that she longed for Ulrika to come and visit her in her loneliness.

  To the north lived the people who spoke her language, but in the other three directions there were no people of her own color. Their nearest neighbors were copper colored. The Indians had recently gathered in great numbers to make camp on one of the islands in Lake Ki-Chi-Saga, and every evening after dark she could see their fires. On that island now lived her nearest neighbors.

  These Indians were said to be docile and peaceful, they would never commit atrocities against white people—but they were also said to be treacherous and unreliable, always watching their chance to scalp and kill the whites! Thus, the varying reports: They were kind, gave the settlers food, and helped them in need; they were bloodthirsty and cruel and blinded the eyes of their prisoners with spears before burning them in their campfires. They were as innocent as children, yet they murdered the settlers’ wives and babies. How could a newcomer know which was the truth?

  From time to time they could hear piercing, long-drawn-out yells from the Indian camp. Only wild beasts yelled like that. But these were not wolf howls, these were human sounds, and as such they were terrifying. These yells through the night would frighten the most courageous, and lying there in the shanty listening to them, the settlers were inclined to believe the evil things they had heard of the brown skins.

  The immigrants on Lake Ki-Chi-Saga had met and escaped so many dangers on their journey that they could scarcely imagine any worse in store for them. Yet now it seemed that their settling here might be as calamitous as their journey. The wild, heathenish people in the neighborhood filled them with insecurity.

  Almost every day Karl Oskar met Indians in the forest, but they had not spoken to him or annoyed him; they only seemed curious, stopping and staring at him. He guessed the Indians were inquisitive. One day, some of their women came to look at the shanty. They carried children in pouches on their backs. One old woman looked hideous, with a face like gray-brown, cracked clay; the mosquitoes hung in droves on her wrinkled face. All the women were thin and looked wretched. Kristina felt sorry for them and wondered if the Indian men tortured them. Comparing her situation with theirs, she felt fortunate in her poverty. These poor creatures lived in the lowliest hovels, under matting hung on a few raised poles; next to their pitiable shelters, her own hut was like a castle. She did not understand how they could survive the winters in such dwellings.

  Karl Oskar felt it unwise to mingle with the Indians in this vast wilderness, and he did not intend to get too close to them. Probably they considered him an intruder. But he had not come here as a thief, he intended to obtain his land honestly from the government of the country, who in turn had bought it from the brown skins. The Indians were too lazy to cultivate the ground. The whites here called them lazy men. And since they did not wish to till the land themselves, they could hardly object if others came and did so. The tiller of the soil had a right to it above all others; it would be a cruel injustice to hungry people if this fertile land—capable of feeding so many—should be allowed to lie fallow, producing only wild grass.

  In the end, the family decided, all they heard of the heathens indicated that they could not be trusted. Though now they left the settlers in peace, there was no assurance of future safety. Karl Oskar always carried his gun when he went into the forest, and he kept it at hand when working near the shanty.

  The building of Danjel’s house had begun, and now Karl Oskar went there to help, as Danjel would help him in return. One day while he was away, and Kristina was alone in the shanty, she suddenly was frightened into immobility: a face had appeared in the opening at the back of the shanty! At first she didn’t realize it was a human face: it looked like a furry animal skin. She saw a black, thick, stringy mat of hair, a dark oily skin splotched with red streaks. But when she discovered something moving under the mat of hair—a pair of coal-black eyes peering at her—then she realized it was a human face looking in through the opening. Human eyes were looking at her. She fled outside with such a loud outcry that she frightened herself.

  Robert heard her, in spite of his deafness, and came running from the clearing. As they looked through the shanty door, the face in the opening disappeared. Turning around, they saw an Indian running into the woods.

  That evening, when Kristina told Karl Oskar about the Indian, he said he would send Robert to work on Danjel’s house tomorrow. Now that he knew the savages were sneaking about their house, he wanted to stay close by; he dared not leave his family alone with the Indian camp so near.

  It could be that the savages had no evil intentions, that they were only curious about the strangers who had moved in on their land—though no one could know for sure what they had in mind. But as Kristina listened to the outlandish yells from the camp on the island, she was filled with a deep sense of compassion. The Indians frightened her, but they were, after all, unchristian, they did not know their Creator, they did not know the difference between good and evil, they lived in darkness, according to their own limited knowledge—who could blame the poor creatures for anything? She herself could not condemn them. She was only grateful she had not been born one of them.

  Here among the savages she could only trust to God’s protection.

  —3—

  Unexpectedly they had a change in the weather. One morning they awakened in their hut shivering—frozen through and through by a cold wind. An icy northwester was sweeping through their shanty, they felt as though the walls had fallen down during the night, as if they were lying in the open. The merciless wind seemed to strip them naked, it penetrated their thick woolen clothing, pinched their skin until it hurt, clawed with sharp talons, and blew right into their bodies.

  When they looked out through the door at this weather, it seemed as if the crust of the earth might blow away. The grass lay flat to the ground like water-combed hair on a head. At the edge of the forest great trees were blown over, the exposed roots stretching heavenward like so many arms. All the haystacks in the meadow had blown over. They wondered that their little shanty still stood.

  Now they could not use their fireplace, which lay to windward of the storm; but they managed to make a fire on the lee side of an enormous oak trunk. When they walked against the wind, they had to stoop in order to move. The unrelenting northwester swept away anything not tied to the earth.

  Kristina said that none among them had ever known what a wind was, until they came to North America.

  The children were blue-red from the cold; Lill-Märta and Harald coughed, and the noses of all three were running. Kristina put an extra pair of woolen stockings on each of them and wrapped them in woolen garments; she herself bundled up as much as she could, until she felt wide as a barrel; she was now in her last month. But clothes did not help against this ferocious wind, big and little shivered and shook; nothing helped. In the daytime they could get some warmth from the fire behind the oak, but how were they to keep warm inside the shanty during the nights if this weather continued?

  “Has the winter come so soon?” Kristina wondered.

  “It couldn’t come so suddenly,” Karl Oskar said anxiously. “It would be too bad for us—the house not yet ready. . . .”

  They had heard of the unexpected changes in temperature hereabouts, and that the thermometer could fall forty degrees in one minute (but American degrees were said to be shorter than Swedish ones). Now the sudden cold and wind
had come upon them while the timbers for the house still lay and waited. The men would come as soon as they had put the roof on Danjel’s house. It was expected to be ready in a week or so. Now Karl Oskar tightened the shanty as best he could; he nailed extra pieces of boards to the windward side and closed all cracks and holes with moss and wet clay. Inside, he laid a ring of stones for a fireplace and cut a hole in the roof for the smoke; now they could heat their hut. During the second night they were able to keep a fire alive, and they covered themselves with every piece of clothing they had, but the cold still penetrated—they froze miserably. The children whined and whimpered in their sleep like kittens. Many times during the night Kristina rose and put a kettle on the fire and boiled a meat soup, which they drank to warm their insides—though nothing could help their outsides.

  In the morning the hurricane died down a little, but toward evening it increased again, with heavy showers of hail. Inch-long pieces of ice, hard as stones, fell and remained in drifts on the ground. But on the third morning the wind abated, and by evening the storm had spent itself.

  After the three days’ frightful weather the sun warmed them again. The hail drifts melted away, the air was so still that not the smallest leaf moved, and the grass that had been combed flat rose again. Mild, late-fall weather reigned once more.

  But the new settlers in the shanty on Lake Ki-Chi-Saga had experienced the touch of the blizzard on their bodies, they felt as if they had been saved from death. The winter had discharged a warning shot to show what miserable shelter they had against the cold north winds; to survive, they would need a tighter, better house, and soon.

  And early one Monday morning their helpers arrived and began to raise the house. They were three carpenters—Karl Oskar, Danjel, and Jonas Petter—with two helpers, Robert and Arvid. Now there were rushed days for Kristina, who must prepare food for all of them over a fire in the open, while she kept an eye on the children. But the break in their loneliness was welcome, now there was life on their place with the menfolk building, and new strength came into her as she saw their house rise on the foundation timbers. Back there, under the great sugar maples, the walls of their new home grew, higher for each meal she prepared for the builders. Often she walked back to watch them and felt as if she herself were participating in the building.

  The house was to be eight feet high at the eaves. The timbers were roughhewn, and now the men smoothed the upper and under sides of the logs to make them lie close together. Karl Oskar would later fill the cracks with moss, which he intended to cover with a mixture of clay and sand. The timberman’s most complicated task was the fitting of the logs together at each corner. “When a corner you can lay, you get a timberman’s pay” was an old saying at home, often quoted to a carpenter’s helper. Karl Oskar had learned building from his father, but he did not feel he was a master; working now as a timberman, he was glad his house had only four corners.

  The long, heavy logs were hoisted into place on the wall by the combined strength of all five men; each log was fastened to the underlying timber by means of thick pegs driven into the lower log and fitted into auger holes in the next one above. There was a racket all day long from three ax hammers; three axes were busy, three timbermen timbered. And the sound of axes against wood was no languid, depressing sound, it was bold, fresh, stimulating—it was a promise, an assurance of security. Here something took place of lasting import—not for a day, or a year, but for future times; here a human abode was raised. And the echo from the timbermen’s axes rang out over the forest in the clear autumn air, it was thrown from tree to tree—the axes cut and hammered, and the echo returned from the other side of the lake.

  Jonas Petter was the master among the three timbermen; his ax corrected and finished where the others had begun. And in rhythm with his ax blows against the timbers, he sang “The Timberman’s Song,” which his father and grandfather before him had sung at house-building in the homeland, a song that had been sung through centuries when walls were raised for Swedish peasant houses, a song always sung to the music of ax and hammer—a song stimulating to the timberman, suitable for singing at his work, and now for the first time sung in Minnesota Territory:

  What’s your daughter doing tonight?

  What’s your daughter doing tonight?

  What’s your timberman’s daughter doing tonight?

  Timberrim, timberram, timberammaram—

  What’s your daughter doing tonight?

  Your daughter is making a bed,

  Your daughter is making a bed,

  Your daughter is making a timberman’s bed—

  Timberrim, timberram, timberammaram—

  Your daughter is making a bed.

  Who shall sleep in your daughter’s bed?

  Who shall sleep in your daughter’s bed?

  Who shall sleep in your daughter’s timberman’s bed?

  Timberrim, timberram, timberammaram—

  Who shall sleep in your daughter’s bed?

  I and your daughter, that’s who

  I and your daughter, that’s who

  I and your timberman’s daughter that’s who. . . .

  “The Timberman’s Song” was fully ten verses long; Jonas Petter knew only three verses and part of the fourth; his father had sung the song to him when they worked as timbermen together, and he had managed to sing it from beginning to end while he set one log in place. The verses Jonas Petter had forgotten described the occupation in the timberman’s bed; but he couldn’t for the life of him remember how it went, except that in the timberman’s bed was made a timberman’s tyke, by a timberman’s “stud.” But, asked Jonas Petter, could there be anything easier than to be a stud, when you had the bed and the woman? He thought it might be more difficult not to.

  The three men timbered up the house walls in five days, and on the sixth they put on the rafters and laid the roofing. Robert and Arvid handed up the turf, each piece fastened to a long pole, and the three men laid the sod over a layer of bark. So the house was ready with four walls and a roof.

  The timbermen’s work was done, a house had been built in the same number of days as God had required in the beginning for the Creation. The seventh day arrived, and the almanac indicated it was a Sunday; and the timbermen kept the Sabbath and rested on the seventh day, while they inspected their handiwork; they found it good, strong, suitable for human habitation. A new home had been built, a solid, sturdy log house on secure footing, not to be felled by wrestling winds. It had been built to stand, by men who had built houses for farmers in Sweden, who had timbered the way their forebears had timbered through the centuries. A new house, of ancient construction, was built in a new land, on the shore of Lake Ki-Chi-Saga. His helpers had done their part, but the long, tedious work of completion remained for Karl Oskar before they could move in. First he laid the flooring; he placed the split linden trunks with the flat side up and fastened them to the joist logs with a wooden peg in each end. The planks were smooth hewn, and the floor turned out as even as it could be from hand-hewn boards. Through the front wall he cut a hole for a door, three feet wide and six feet and a half high; he wanted to be able to step over his threshold into his new home in America without having to bend his neck. He made the door of oak, heavy and clumsy as a church door; it would be a chore for the smaller children to open. He hung it by the strong, expensive hinges—the ones that had cost a whole dollar. Then he made a simple wooden latch for the outside, but on the inside he fitted heavy timbers for bolts, so that they could lock themselves in securely against their brown neighborfolk, if need be. He cut three holes for windows—one larger one, to the right of the door at the front, and a small one in each gable; the glazed sash, sent for from Stillwater, was fitted into these. He would have liked to let more of God’s clear daylight into his house, but he could not afford any more of the expensive glass.

  Next in turn was the fireplace where the food was to be prepared; it would also be the source of heat and of light at night. He had lately worked
as carpenter, timberman, and roofer, now he must also do a mason’s work, and this worried him. He asked Jonas Petter to help him, and with his skillful neighbor’s aid, he built a fireplace and chimney of stone, clay, and sand. Later, with less urgency, he would build a bake oven beside the fireplace.

  The fireplace took up one corner of the house; in each one of the three remaining corners, Karl Oskar built a bedstead: one for Kristina and himself, one for the children, and one for Robert. Six feet from each gable and five feet from the side walls, he fastened posts to the floor on which he placed timbers long enough to be secured to the gable wall; this made the bed frames. Crossing these timbers and fitting between the wall logs he laid thinner scantlings for the bed bottom. He had seen beds built this way in an American settler’s house in Taylors Falls and he liked them; they were easy to make, yet ingenious and practical. During the coming winter he would make such furniture as they absolutely needed when he was forced to sit inside by the fire.

  Karl Oskar brought Kristina over to their new house for a tour of inspection, to show her all he had done. He explained that everything was on the rough side—walls, windows, floor, door, and ceiling. There were no perfectly smooth surfaces—but he had done the best he could. And nothing was intended for looks, anyway, all was done to keep out rain, wind, cold. It could not be helped if the walls were a little rough, if the floor wasn’t quite even, if the door hung askew. Yes, the door did hang somewhat crooked, but she must remember the old saying: “Out of plumb is dumb, but a little lean cannot be seen.” Many planks might be poorly fitted, for he had used mostly pegs, he hadn’t driven a hundred nails into the whole house; the price of nails had worried him so much that he had thought a long while before using one.