The Settlers Read online

  Moberg put an equal amount of care into his descriptions of Arvid’s and Robert’s fates. Where Moberg could be rather unsympathetic to some of his more dominant male characters, he showed a sensitivity toward weaker, less fortunate males that is remindful of his kind portrayal of Kristina and Ulrika. Although Moberg saw the folly of Arvid’s and Robert’s adventures in the West, he sympathized nonetheless with their plight. It seems clear, in fact, that if Karl Oskar was a persona for Moberg’s practical side, Robert represented the author’s imaginative, creative bent.

  In earlier versions of The Settlers, Moberg included a note to American readers explaining that he had prioritized the needs of literature above purely geographical facts. Moberg wrote: “In the interests of fiction I have taken certain liberties with geography, time and distance in the passages describing the travels of Robert and Arvid.”6 Behind this somewhat mysterious note lies a small episode. Lannestock pointed out to Moberg that since Missouri has no deserts it was not possible to have Arvid die as he does in the novel. Moberg replied that the location of the event did not matter since he was writing a symbolic tale. Neither Lannestock’s nor Simon and Schusters repeated protests convinced Moberg to change the location of the episode involving Arvid. Lannestock wrote of the affair as an uncharacteristic lapse in Moberg’s exacting efforts to achieve verisimilitude. The above-mentioned note was a compromise worked out between Moberg, his agent, and the publisher.7

  Moberg emphasized his characters’ pioneering experience in such detail that by the end of The Settlers he had moved the plot forward only to the year 1860. It remained for The Last Letter Home, the shortest of the four books, to cover the final thirty years of the novels’ time span, that is, the period up to 1890. Remaining to be dealt with were the problems that arose between white settlers and Native Americans in 1862, the events of the Civil War years, and the details of Karl Oskar’s last decades on the farm.

  R. McK.

  NOTES

  1. Moberg, Nybyggarna (Stockholm: Bonniers, 1984), 536.

  2. Lannestock, Vilhelm Moberg i Amerika, 61.

  3. Andrew Peterson and Family Papers, 1854–1931, Minnesota Historical Society, St. Paul, Minn.

  4. Moberg discussed Peterson’s journals in “The Life History of a Swedish Farmer,” The Unknown Swedes, 36–55. For other discussions of the journals, see Grace Lee Nute, “The Diaries of a Swedish-American Farmer, Andrew Peterson,” Yearbook (Minneapolis: American Institute of Swedish Arts, Literature and Science, 1945), 105–8; McKnight, Moberg’s Emigrant Novels and the Journals of Andrew Peterson: A Study of Influences and Parallels (New York: Arno Press, 1979).

  5. Moberg, “Romanen om utvandrarromanen,” 312.

  6. Moberg, “Author’s note,” The Last Letter Home (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1961), [6].

  7. Lannestock, Vilhelm Moberg i Amerika, 100–103.

  Bibliography for the Emigrant Novels

  Compiled by Vilhelm Moberg

  Pehr Kalm: En resa i Norra Amerika. I–III. (1753–1761.)

  Carl Aug. Gosselman: Resa i Norra Amerika. (Stockholm 1835.)

  Hans Mattson: Minnen. (Chicago 1890.)

  Johan Bolin: Beskrifning öfwer Nord-Amerikas Förenta Stater. (Wexiö 1853.)

  Ole Rynning: Beretning om Amerika. (Kristiania 1838.)

  Gustaf Unonius: Minnen från en sjuttonårig vistelse i Nordvestra Amerika. I–II. (Uppsala 1862.)

  Emeroy Johnson: Early Life of Eric Norelius. 1833–1862. (Rock Island 1934.)

  Oscar N. Olsson: The Augustana Lutheran Church in America. Pioneer Period 1846–1860. (Rock Island 1934.)

  N. Lindgren: Handlingar rörande åkianismen. (Wexiö 1867.)

  E. Herlenius: Åkianismens historia. (Stockholm 1902.)

  ———. Erik Janseismens historia. (Stockholm 1900.)

  M. A. Mikkelsen: The Bishop Hill Colony. (Chicago 1892.)

  George M. Stephenson: The Religious Aspects of Swedish Immigration. (Minneapolis 1932.)

  L. Landgren: Om Sectväsendet. (Härnösand 1878.)

  Joh. Schröder: Vägvisare för Emigranter. (Stockholm 1868.)

  H. Hörner: Nyaste Handbok för Utvandrare. (Stockholm 1868.)

  A. E. Strand: A History of the Swedish-Americans of Minnesota. I–III. (Chicago 1910.)

  Theodore C. Blegen: Building Minnesota. (Minnesota Historical Society. 1938.)

  ———. Norwegian Migration to America. (Northfield 1940.)

  ———. Land of Their Choice. (Minneapolis 1955.)

  Lawrence Guy Brown: Immigration. (New York 1933.)

  W. J. Petersen: Steamboating on the Upper Mississippi. (Iowa City 1937.)

  Herbert and Edward Quick: Mississippi Steamboating. (New York 1926.)

  Joseph Henry Jackson: Forty-Niners. (Boston 1949.)

  ———. Gold Rush Album. (New York 1949.)

  Henry K. Norton: The Story of California. (Chicago 1923.)

  G. Catlin: Nord-Amerikas Indianer. övers, från eng. (Stockholm 1848.)

  Colin F. MacDonald: The Sioux War of 1862.

  I. V. D. Heard: The History of the Sioux War. (New York 1863.)

  J. F. Rhodes: The History of the Civil War. (1917.)

  C. Channing: A History of the United States I–VI. (1925.)

  Edvard A. Steiner: On the Trail of the Immigrant. (New York 1906.)

  Francis Parkman: The Oregon Trail. (New York 1950.)

  Oscar Commetant: Tre år i Förenta Staterna. Iakttagelser och skildringar. (Stockholm 1860.)

  Clarence S. Peterson: St. Croix River Valley Territorial Pioneers. (Baltimore 1949.)

  John R. Commons: Races and Immigrants in America. (New York 1907.)

  A. W. Quirt: Tales of the Woods and Mines. (Waukesha 1941.)

  The Frontier Holiday. A collection of writings by Minnesota Pioneers. (St. Paul 1948.)

  Robert B. Thomas: The Old Farmers Almanac. First issued in 1792 for the Year 1793. (Boston 1954.)

  Minnesota Farmers Diaries: William R. Brown 1845–1846.

  ———. Y. Jackson 1852–1863. (The Minnesota Historical Society. St. Paul 1939.)

  Swedish-American Historical Bulletin. 1928–1939. (St. Paul.)

  Year-Book of The Swedish Historical Society of America. 1909–1910. 1923–1924. (Minneapolis.)

  G. N. Swahn: Svenskarna i Sioux City. Några blad ur deras historia. (Chicago 1912.)

  Roger Burlingame: Machines That Built America. (New York 1953.)

  Railway Information Series: A Chronology of American Railroads.

  ———. The Human Side of Railroading. (Washington 1949.)

  Andrew Peterson: Dagbok åren 1854–1898. En svensk farmares levnadsbeskrivning. 16 delar. (Manuskript i Minnesota Historical Library. St. Paul.)

  Mina Anderson: En nybyggarhustrus minnen. (Manuskript tillh. förf.)

  Alford Roos. Diary of my father Oscar Roos. (Manuskript d:o.)

  Peter J. Aronson: En svensk utvandrares minnen. (Manuskript d:o.)

  Charles C. Anderson: Levernesbeskrivning. (Manuskript d:o.)

  Eric A. Nelson: My Pioneer Life. (Manuskript d:o.)

  V.M.

  Locarno, June 1, 1959.

  Suggested Readings in English

  Compiled by Roger McKnight

  About Vilhelm Moberg:

  Holmes, Philip. Vilhelm Moberg. Boston: Twayne, 1980.

  McKnight, Roger, “The New Columbus: Vilhelm Moberg Confronts American Society,” Scandinavian Studies 64 (Summer 1992):356–89.

  Moberg, Vilhelm. The Unknown Swedes: A Book About Swedes and America, Past and Present. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1988.

  Thorstensson, Roland B. “Vilhelm Moberg as a Dramatist for the People.” Ph.D. diss., University of Washington, 1974.

  Wright, Rochelle. “Vilhelm Moberg’s Image of America.” Ph.D. diss., University of Washington 1975.

  About Swedish Immigration:

  Barton, H. Arnold. A Folk Divided: Homeland Swedes and Swedish Americans, 1840–1940. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University
Press, 1994.

  ———, ed. Letters from the Promised Land: Swedes in America, 1840–1914. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press for the Swedish Pioneer Historical Society, 1975.

  Beijbom, Ulf, ed. Swedes in America: New Perspectives. Växjö: Swedish Emigrant Institute, 1993.

  Blanck, Dag and Harald Runblom, eds. Swedish Life in American Cities. Uppsala: Centre for Multiethnic Research, 1991.

  Hasselmo, Nils. Swedish America: An Introduction. New York: Swedish Information Service, 1976.

  Ljungmark, Lars. Swedish Exodus. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1979.

  Nordstrom, Byron, ed. The Swedes in Minnesota. Minneapolis: Denison, 1976.

  THE SETTLERS

  Part One

  Foundation for Growth

  PREFACE

  THE LAND THEY CHANGED

  A giant tree, uprooted by a storm, fell across a path that ran along the shore of Lake Ki-Chi-Saga in Chippewa Indian country. It remained where it had fallen, an obstacle to those who used the path. No Indian had ever thought to cut it in pieces and roll it out of the way. Instead a new path was formed which bypassed the tree; instead of removing it the Indians moved the path.

  As the years passed the great tree lay there and moss covered its bole. A generation of forest life elapsed, and the fallen tree began to rot. The path round it was by now well tramped, and no one remembered any longer that once it had run straight in this place. Through the years, Indians wasted much time on the longer path, but to these people time was there to be wasted.

  One day a man of another race came along the path. He carried an ax on his shoulder and walked heavily, shod in boots made on another continent. With his ax he split the rotten trunk in a few places and rolled it aside. The path was again straight and now ran its earlier, shorter course. And the man with the ax who could not waste his time on a longer road, asked himself: Why had this tree been allowed to obstruct the path for so long a time that it had begun to rot?

  The tiller had come to the land of the nomad; the day the white man removed the tree from the Indian path at Lake Ki-Chi-Saga two different ways of life met head on.

  The era of the nomad was coming to an end in this part of the world. The people who had time enough to wait a generation while an obstacle in their path rotted away were doomed. The hunter who moved his fire and his tent according to the season and the migration of the game could count his days. In his place came the farmer, the permanent inhabitant, who built his fireplace of stone and timbered his house: he had come to stay in this place where his hearth fire burned and his house was built.

  Through a treaty which the Indians were forced to accept, the land was opened for settling and claimtaking. The hunter people were forced back before the power of the transgressors. Their hunting grounds, with the graves of their forefathers, were surrendered. Virgin soil, deep and fertile, could then be turned into fruitful fields with the tillers tools. An immense country, until now lacking any order except nature’s own, was divided, surveyed, registered, mapped, and separated into counties, townships, and sections. Millions of acres of wilderness were mapped on paper in square lots, each one intended as a homestead for a settler.

  The newcomers were farmers without land who came to a country with land but no farmers. They came from the Old World where they had lived under governments they themselves had not elected and which they refused to accept. They had moved away from rulers and overlords, from poverty and suppression. They had left Germany because of revolution, Ireland because of potato blight, Sweden because of religious persecution. The immigrants were the disobedient sons and daughters of their homelands, who now settled down on a land that as yet had little or no government.

  The disobedient folk of the Old World were young people: three quarters of the settlers in Minnesota Territory were under thirty. They had no useless oldsters to support. The immigrants were young people in a young country. The immigrants were not held back by the authority of an older generation. For them life began anew: they depended entirely on themselves and their own strength. They broke with many of the old customs, did their chores in their own ways, and obeyed no will except their own. Here they themselves must wield authority; in the wilderness they enjoyed in full measure the new freedom to disobey.

  Here were no upper or lower classes, no one had inherited special privileges and rights, no one was by virtue of his birth superior or inferior. Each one was valued according to his ability, measured by his industry. Whether a man was better than another or inferior to him depended on what he could do. The virgin forests fostered self-assurance, developed free men.

  The immigrant did not wait while an obstacle in his path rotted away; he did not have time to make a detour round a fallen tree. He had come to make a living for himself and his family, he must build a house and establish a home; he must build up a new society from its very foundation.

  The first immigrants to take up claims were few and lived far apart. They could not talk to each other across their fences—their houses lay miles away from one another. But from 1850 on, the influx into the Territory increased. The settlers came in large groups, small groups, families and friends, or single individuals, and settled down along the shores of the heaven-blue waters that had given the territory its name: Minnesota.

  Thus, the brown nomad gave way to the white farmer, the forest animals gave up their grazing meadows to domesticated animals, the deer pastures were turned into tended fields, the tall trees were felled and made into lumber for the settlers’ houses. High and clear shone the sky above the wilderness where the immigrants founded their new domain. The far horizons in a land without limitations stimulated their minds and desire to create; all would be new here.

  Great was the land and without measure, and the land broadened their dreams.

  This is a continuation of a story of a group of people who left their homes in Ljuder, Sweden, and emigrated to North America.

  Sweden was the land they left behind; the American republic received them; and the fertile valley near Lake Ki-Chi-Saga—between the Mississippi and the St. Croix rivers—was the land they changed.

  I

  NEW AXES RINGING IN THE FOREST

  —1—

  One day in May Karl Oskar Nilsson was out on his claim cutting fence posts. When the height of the sun signaled noon he stopped his work to go home for dinner.

  He took off one of his wooden shoes and emptied out a few dried lumps of blue clay which had chafed his heel. On his shoe was a deep gash from his ax. What luck that he wore wooden shoes today; in the morning, while shaping the first linden post, his ax had slipped and fastened in the toe of his right shoe. Had he worn leather boots the ax would have split his foot. Not that he could choose. His high boots—of finest leather, made by the village cobbler before he had left his Swedish home parish—were long since worn out and thrown away. After all the many miles he had tramped in them, in all weathers and on all types of roads during his three years in North America, they were now entirely gone. He had tried his hand at the shoemaker’s craft, as well as all other crafts, and he had mended and patched his Swedish boots, he had plugged and resoled and sewn as much as he could. But nearly all the footgear and clothing from Sweden was now useless, worn to shreds.

  With his ax under his arm, he walked beside the lake on the path he had cleared, through groves of larch trees and elms, through thickets of maple and hazel bushes. It was pleasant along the path today with the multitude of newly opened leaves and all the fresh greenery. Spring was early this year in the Territory. The wild apple trees were already in full bloom and shone luminously white in the lush greenery. A mild night rain had watered the earth so that a fragrance rose from grass and flowers. Between the tree trunks the whole length of Lake Ki-Chi-Saga’s surface glittered blue.

  For great stretches the lush green growth hung over the lake and no one could make out where the ground ended and the water began. Farther out the bay was full of birds—ducks, swans, and wi
ld geese in such multitudes they might have been strewn from heaven by generous hands. From the shore could be seen a thick wall of tall elms. At first Karl Oskar had thought it was the opposite side of the lake but when he rowed out in his holed-out canoe along the shores he had discovered it was a wooded island, with still another great island beyond. He had discovered that Ki-Chi-Saga consisted of seven small lakes, connected by narrow channels so that the shores formed a confusing and ever straying coil. This was a lake landscape, a conglomeration of islets, peninsulas, points, inlets, bays, necks, headlands, isthmuses. Each islet, bay, or tongue of land had another islet, bay, or tongue of land behind it.

  It took a long time for a settler to get to know this lake. Ki-Chi-Saga spread like an inundated deciduous forest where water had remained in the indentations as the ground had risen above the ancient flood. From a distance of a few miles it appeared the thickets of leaf trees on the out-jutting tongues of land grew far out in the lake.

  High above the shore rose the imposing sandstone cliff resembling an Indian’s head and thus called the Indian. The cliff’s red-brown face with the deep, black eye holes was turned toward the lake, straining toward the east like a watchman over land and water.

  The lake contained much that was unknown and undiscovered. The Chippewa name itself sounded strange; Ki-Chi-Saga—beautiful lake—sounded to a settler’s ears as alien as all the foreignness he must familiarize himself with and make his own.

  A wide flock of doves came flying over the bay, like a darkening cloud; their shadows reflected in the clear surface like quick-moving spots.

  When the doves had passed, Karl Oskar stopped and listened: the whizzing sound of bird wings was followed by another sound; he could hear the ring of an ax.

  The May day was clear and calm and the sound carried far. Karl Oskar had two good ears, accustomed to discriminating between noises and sounds in the forest, and he was not mistaken. He could hear the echoing sound of a sharp ax in a tree trunk. The sounds came from the southeast and were fairly close: someone was felling a tree near the lake.