Vilhelm Moberg - The Settlers

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 wild 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.

His eyebrows drew together. It could not be an Indian at work — the Indians did not fell trees with axes. It must be a white man; an intruder had come to his land.

But he had his papers as squatter for this ground; he had made two payments for his claim at the land office in Stillwater. His claim had been surveyed — it was number 35 of the section — and its borders were blazed. No one could now push him out, no one could deny him his rights. Here in his forest he had up till now heard only his own ax ringing; he would permit no other ax here.

Karl Oskar turned and retraced his steps to locate the intruder.

Last year, because of the danger of Indians, he had always carried his gun while working in the forest. It might also happen that he would come across an animal that would do for food. He often said that he did not feel fully clothed without his gun. Nowadays, however, he frequently left his weapon at home hanging on the wall, and this he had done today. Nor did he think he would need a firearm against the stranger; a man using the peaceful tool of the ax must be a peaceful man.

Karl Oskar strode toward the sound. The timberman was farther away than he had anticipated; sounds could be heard a great distance on a calm day like today. It appeared that the stranger with the ax was outside his border; no intruder was on his land.

Who could the woodsman be? He had no close neighbors; it could not be anyone he knew. He climbed a steep cliff, and now he could see that the sounds came from a pine grove near a narrow channel of the lake. A man was cutting at a straight, tall pine, his broad felling-ax glittering in the sun. The chips flew like white birds that might have been nesting in the trunk and were frightened away by the blows.

Just as Karl Oskar approached, the tree fell with a thunderous crash, crushing the smaller trees near it. The undergrowth swayed from the force of the fall.

The tree cutter held his ax in his left hand while he dried perspiration from his forehead with his right. He was a powerful man, dressed in a plaid flannel shirt, yellow, worn skin breeches, and short-legged boots. Judging by his clothes he must be an American. And he used the same type of long-handled American felling-ax with a thin, broad blade that Karl Oskar recently had got for himself.

Suspicion of any stranger was still ingrained in the Swedish settler; apprehensively he stopped a few paces from the stump of the newly felled pine. The stranger heard him and turned around. His face was lean and weather-beaten, with high cheekbones and deep hollows. Tufts of sweaty, thin hair clung to his forehead; his chin was covered with a long brown beard.

The man eyed Karl Oskar from head to toe, his alert eyes those of a person accustomed to danger.

Before Karl Oskar had time to phrase a greeting in English, the stranger said, “You’re Swedish, I guess?”

Karl Oskar stared back in astonished silence; deep in this wilderness he had encountered a stranger who spoke to him in his native tongue.

Leaning his ax against the stump, the man offered Karl Oskar his hand: “I’m Petrus Olausson, from Alfta parish in Helsingland. I’m a farmer.”

Karl Oskar Nilsson gave his name in return, and added that he was a farmer from Ljuder parish in Småland.

“I knew you were a Swede!”

“How did you know?”

“By looking at your feet!” The Helsinge farmer smiled good-naturedly and pointed to Karl Oskar’s footgear. “Your wooden shoes, man! Only Swedes wear wooden shoes!” He grinned, showing long, broad upper teeth.

Karl Oskar knew that the Americans called the Swedish settlers the wooden-shoe people.

Petrus Olausson took off his hat and uncovered a bald spot on top of his head. He seemed to be about forty, ten years older than Karl Oskar. His clothes and his speech indicated he was no newcomer to America. He used the same mixed-up language as Anders Månsson of Taylors Falls, one of the first Swedes in the Territory.