Vilhelm Moberg - The Settlers

“We have forgotten to mention the worst we have gone through,” she said.

They had talked of weather and wild animals and Indians, but there remained something else: the loneliness at Lake Ki-Chi-Saga.

“I can’t tell you how glad I am to get neighbors at last!”

The words had escaped from her full heart. Occasionally a hunter or someone from the lumbering company would come to their cabin. But what pleasure was there in guests she couldn’t speak to? Months and months would pass before an outsider sat at this table and spoke her mother tongue. Now she must tell her countryman how it felt to live alone for three long years.

With no people living around, a person often felt empty and depressed, completely lost. And that hurt was worse than any physical pain; it plagued worse each lonely day that passed. And living here so long without seeing people might at last affect the mind. She knew how it was after these years; she was not telling a lie when she said that human beings could not live without other human beings.

While talking she had avoided Karl Oskar’s eyes. Now he looked at her in surprise.

“I thought you had got used to living alone, Kristina.”

“I don’t think one ever gets used to it. .”

She felt the tears in her eyes and turned her face away quickly.

Petrus Olausson had listened with great attention; now he turned to Karl Oskar.

“I’m sorry that Mrs. Nilsson feels so alone in America.”

She asked him not to call her Mrs. Nilsson — she was no American lady, only a simple Swedish farm wife. “Please call me Kristina; and can’t I call you Uncle Petrus?” Sitting here, talking Swedish with a Swede, she felt he was almost a relative.

“All right, call me Uncle! And now cheer up, Kristina! I’ll be living next door!”

She rose suddenly. “I sit here and forget myself. I must put on the coffee!”

The Helsinge farmer too rose from the table and again said a prayer:

“All praise to you, O Lord, for food and drink!”

Kristina, standing at the fireplace, her hands folded around the coffee mill, repeated the prayer after him. To her, today seemed like a Sunday in the cabin.

— 3—

Karl Oskar was anxious to show Olausson around his claim, but Kristina wanted to keep him inside and talk to him. It was a long time since she had been so talkative, she was stimulated by the neighbor’s call. Eagerly she refilled his cup before he had emptied it.

The Helsinge farmer said that very soon more Swedes would be coming to settle here. Two families would be arriving this spring, one from Helsingland and one from Östergötland, and he knew them both. In letters to his friends in Sweden, he had described this valley and urged them to move to this land of plenty. He was sure many people would be coming over from Sweden; soon it wouldn’t be lonely here any more.

This was wonderful news to Kristina, who had felt they would have to live alone forever beside the Indian lake. But she wasn’t quite convinced; why would groups of people move from Sweden to this very region where only heathens worshiped their wooden images? She suspected their new neighbor was talking of arriving countrymen only to comfort her.

“How many Swedes might there be in this valley?” queried Petrus Olausson.

Karl Oskar counted silently. Their nearest neighbor toward Taylors Falls, he told Petrus, was Kristina’s uncle, Danjel Andreasson, whose place was called New Kärragärde; he was a widower with three children. His neighbor was Jonas Petter Albrektsson, also a farmer from Ljuder, who had arrived with their group. Jonas Petter had a woman from Dalecarlia, called Swedish Anna, keeping house for him. In Taylors Falls an Öländer, Anders Månsson, lived with his old mother; also a trapper named Samuel Nöjd. At Hay Lake, near Stillwater, west of Marine, three young Swedes, who batched in their cabin, had moved in last spring; he had never met them and did not know their names. And they themselves were two grown people and four small children. If he had counted aright, there were eighteen Swedish people in the St. Croix Valley.

“And now we three families will settle here,” said the Helsinge farmer. “That makes more than thirty Swedes. We must start a congregation.”

“What kind of congregation?” wondered Karl Oskar.

“To build a God’s house! In Andover we started a parish with only twenty-two members.”

“A church parish. .?”

“Yes, we’ll build a church!”

“A church!” exclaimed Kristina, breathlessly.

“Only a little log temple, a God’s house of plain wood.”

A silence fell in the cabin. Karl Oskar looked in surprise at his guest; the settlers out here had as yet not had time to build decent houses for themselves and their livestock. He had built himself a barn, but his stable wasn’t ready yet, and this summer he intended to build a threshing barn. All the settlers still had houses to build for themselves and shelters for their cattle and their crops. How could they manage to build a church and pay for a minister?

“We mustn’t strive so much for worldly things that we forget eternity! Need for stables is no excuse to delay building a house for God!” Petrus Olausson spoke in a severe preaching voice.

“Build a church. .?” murmured Kristina, as if talking in her sleep. “It sounds impossible. .”

But Olausson went on: “America is full of false prophets swarming all over and snaring the settlers in dangerous heresies. I have seen, to my sorrow, some of my countrymen living in a pure heathenish and animal life, never listening to the Word. And some good, Christian men from my home village in Sweden got together a group and went off to the goldfields in California. They sought riches instead of the gospel truth, they looked for lumps of gold instead of the eternal life of the Holy Ghost. But they also perished within a short time because of their blindness; of twenty-eight gold seekers only four came back, and of these only one found enough gold for his future. Shouldn’t this example dampen people from worshiping Mammon?”

“I had a younger brother with me when we came here,” said Karl Oskar. “Two years ago he and a friend took off for California.”

“Have you heard from these foolish youngsters?”

“Only twice so far.”

From a box in the Swedish chest back in the corner Karl Oskar picked up a sheet of paper which he handed to Olausson: “The last letter from my brother. It came a few days ago; it was written early this year.”

Petrus Olausson read the letter aloud:

“On the California Trail January 1853

“Dear Brother Karl Oskar Nilsson,

“How are you and Kristina and the children? I am well. Arvid and I are still on the California Trail. That road is long, you know, almost as long as the road back to Sweden. We have met many adventures. When I get back I will relate to you and Kristina everything I am now leaving out of my letter.

“We are getting along well but have had our troubles. We shall make out well in the gold land, be sure of that, Karl Oskar.

“I guess you are still poking in your fields. You like it. But I will play a lone hand, as you know. I am hunting for gold and will find it. Don’t worry about me and feel no worry inside yourself. I will be back when I am a rich man. Before I will not come. Then I shall buy oxen for you and cows for Kristina.

“Arvid sends greetings to his old master and all Swedes in that part. I greet Kristina and the children.

“Your brother

Robert Nilsson.”

Kristina pointed out, “Robert has not put down his address.”

“He would have no permanent post office because he was on the trail,” explained Olausson. “He says he is on his way. The gold diggers have to climb high mountains and cross wide deserts to reach California, and they need plenty of time for that road.”