The Last Letter Home

IX. THE RIVER OR THE FONT?

— 1—

The Swedish immigrants in the St. Croix Valley had become divided in religious matters. In recent years Baptist and Methodist congregations had been established, and many other sects were proselytizing among the Lutherans. Most numerous were the Baptists, whose revivalist Fredrik Nilsson was very active among his countrymen. The Lutheran ministers considered him the most dangerous sectarian in Minnesota.

Fredrik Nilsson had been a seaman and had sailed the seven seas. Already in 1851 he had been exiled from Sweden for preaching immersion. He had sought asylum in North America and settled in Waconia in Carver County, where he had founded a Baptist congregation and built a church. From there he spread the new teaching to other Swedish settlements. His countrymen were disturbed to hear that he had been banished from Sweden because of his faith, and this made it easier for him to gain converts. Nilsson came to St. Paul to preach and on one single day he baptized thirty-seven Swedes in the Mississippi River. Then he traveled to Taylors Falls and preached, founded a Baptist congregation, and immersed twenty-two persons in the St. Croix River.

But when it was rumored that Fredrik Nilsson would come and preach to the Lutherans at Chisago Lake, their pastor issued an order from the pulpit: No home must be opened to this uncouth, unschooled sailor who was not ordained as a church official! No member of their parish must open his house to this false teacher who was trying to gain a foothold in their community!

Johannes Stenius, the new pastor, was more rigid against sectarians than had been his predecessors. He considered it a shepherd’s first duty to fight irreligion and guard his entrusted flock against dispersal. In almost every sermon, he warned his listeners against the lost souls who were allowed to roam this country at will. He bitterly deplored the lawmakers of North America who, with entirely wrong ideas concerning spiritual freedom, had failed to safeguard the only true and right religion, the Lutheran. In Sweden Lutheranism was protected by the police authorities, but in America it was completely unguarded, so that simple and uneducated people were an easy prey. In Sweden false prophets were exiled or jailed on bread and water, but here they were honored and considered more important than those consecrated by God to preach his Holy Word.

This dart thus hurled against the Baptist preacher Fredrik Nilsson by the Lutheran minister had a result quite contrary to the one intended. At least ten different people offered him a room in which to preach. And he came to Center City and preached from Luke 2:7: “. . because there was no room for them in the inn. .” After the sermon a Baptist congregation was established among the Chisago people and twenty-four were baptized in the waters of the lake.

Great excitement followed in the Lutheran congregation; some twenty members, after hearing Nilsson preach, left the church and were baptized, and others wavered in their Lutheran faith. Women especially were open to the former sailor’s preaching. And Pastor Stenius issued still stronger warnings from his pulpit: His flock must consider its eternal welfare and not be blinded by the Baptist will-o’-the-wisp; women, with their inherited ignorance, were more easily a prey to this convert-maker. Each time a woman was led astray, Pastor Stenius could hear the angels cry in heaven and the devils roar with joyous laughter in hell.

Then, in one sermon, he issued a stern order to all married men to watch their wives and prevent them from being ensnared in sectarianism. This irritated many of the women: How much must they take from the pulpit? Great disputes started in the congregation. Karl Oskar Nilsson spoke out to their new pastor: He had recently come from Sweden and they realized he did not understand the temper among the settlers; here in America they no longer obeyed orders from the clergy. The pastor had no authority over them; he was their servant. He did not decide what they should do, he was not their master, it wasn’t like the old country. They had no wish for a new church power, they were glad to be rid of the old.

Pastor Stenius replied haughtily that he was not employed as the congregation’s servant; in his office he obeyed only God.

A few settlers were angered because the pastor had called them Sabbath breakers when they harvested their crop on a Sunday. No sensible person could harbor such exaggerated ideas about God’s protection that they could leave their dry crops in the fields when they saw rain coming. They appreciated the pastor’s zeal, but the shepherd’s care must not force them to lose their livelihood. Even in good things, many felt, their new pastor overdid it.

The congregation was now threatened with a serious disruption. And some said the pastor himself had caused this.

— 2—

After the visit to Dr. Farnley in Stillwater Karl Oskar saw to it that Kristina followed the doctors orders. She took her medicine, avoided the heaviest chores, and lay down to rest for a time each day. Already after a few weeks she began to feel stronger. The bleedings diminished and soon stopped entirely, while her appetite and strength returned. And when the sun again began to feel warm after the coldest winter they had ever experienced, she quickened for every day. Never had she been so glad to hear the first dripping from the eaves, never had she felt such joy at seeing the first blades of grass sprouting, never had a spring brought her such fresh renewal.

One day in Easter week when she was busy with spring cleaning, Manda Svensson came to call.

Kristina had not seen their neighbor woman for many weeks and had wondered about this.

Manda had completely changed. Her eyes were wild and roaming and her mind disturbed: “I don’t know what to do! Can you help me, Kristina?”

Manda had helped them many times during the winter. Today she herself needed help.

“What in all the world. .? What is the matter?”

“Trouble in my soul.”

“In your soul. .?”

Kristina stopped still with the broom in her hand. Manda had always been neat and clean, but today she looked dirty and sloppy, her hair hung in strings down her cheeks.

“Kristina!” It came like a wail. “I doubt the Lutherans have got it right. If I should die I’m afraid I’ll be lost.”

Now Kristina could guess what had happened; her neighbor had listened to Fredrik Nilsson, who said that a person must experience a new baptism in order to earn salvation. And Manda had felt that every word he said was true and right. Immersion seemed to her the only, the glorious, the true religion. She had started to doubt and worry. Should she leave their church and be baptized? For several weeks she had been unable to sleep nights, she only turned and twisted and suffered.

“What does Algot think?”

“He doesn’t want to go through another baptism. He wants to remain a Lutheran.”

“That isn’t good. A couple should not separate in religion.”

“Exactly what Algot says! I want to become a Baptist and he wants to remain a Lutheran. Who must give in?” And she looked expectantly, questioningly at Kristina.

“Have you talked to our pastor?”

“Yes, but he only condemns me. He calls Nilsson a false prophet, a seducer who should be put in jail. But he is really a martyr, like St. Stephen.”

What Kristina heard depressed her. Must difference in religion now part married couples also, whom God had joined together?

“Pastor Stenius doesn’t leave us in peace a moment, he wants so to baptize our little son.”

Algot and Manda had a boy about six months old. He should have been christened long ago but it had been delayed because of the intense cold when babies couldn’t be taken outside. And since the mother had begun to doubt the Lutheran tenets, she didn’t want her son baptized in that faith. But Pastor Stenius gave her no peace. She actually had to hide the child from him.

“You mean he wants to christen him by force?” asked Kristina in surprise.

“The pastor says it is his duty to christen the child. He would rather see a mother throw her offspring right into a fire than leave it to the Anabaptists.”

“But he can’t christen him against the will of the parents?”

“It’s his duty as pastor, he says.”

And Manda told how Pastor Stenius, the day before, in the company of Mr. and Mrs. Olausson had come to their house; empowered by his office he was going to baptize their heathen child. Olausson and his wife, known as upright Christians, were to be the witnesses. Algot was out in the forest and she was alone at home. The pastor walked out into the kitchen and took down her fine soup tureen from its shelf, the one with blue flowers and leaves. Then he had ordered her to put on a kettle of pure water and when it was lukewarm pour it into the soup bowl which he wanted to use as a font. The Olaussons aided the minister and tried to frighten her: God’s doom would be upon her if the child were lost because she refused to have it baptized.

But she didn’t put on any water, nor did she swaddle the little one in christening-veil — she refused to hand him over for baptism.

She had been so upset she didn’t know what to do, but when Mrs. Olausson poured the water into the tureen and Pastor Stenius opened his book, she had picked up her lastborn from his crib, wrapped a shawl around him, and run outside. She had run as fast as she could, a long way into the forest. There she had hidden in some bushes for a whole hour while the child cried to high heaven. At last she discovered why he hollered so — he was covered with ants and his whole body was red. Then she had gone home to put something on to ease the itch, and by that time the uninvited guests had left.

But now she was afraid they might come back sometime when she was out, and Algot would let them baptize the boy in the Lutheran religion.

“But they can’t do it by force,” Kristina comforted the worried mother. “Not here in America.”

“The minister says I’ve forgotten my duties, and he must christen the child because God has ordered him to.”

“In the old country they could do as they pleased, they were that mighty, but not here.”

Kristina recalled that the minister at home in Ljuder had forcibly christened one of the Akians’ children many years ago. It was her Uncle Danjel’s father in Kärragärde who had thus been baptized while the parents were away. The minister had feared the Akians would themselves christen the child and he had wanted to save the newborn from the sectarians. The parents had been in the field haying and had left the boy at home with an old feeble-minded woman. The minister knew this and had used the opportunity. The Akians had been greatly incensed, but the minister had only replied: While the negligent parents harvested fodder for the cattle — which seemed to them more valuable than their child’s salvation — he had harvested a soul for God’s kingdom.

“But I don’t believe a forced baptism is holy and just,” said Kristina. “I think the pastor should leave the child alone until you and Algot agree about the christening.”

Manda Svensson rocked her body back and forth on the chair, her eyes red, her mind befuddled.

“But I’m worrying about my own salvation.” She wailed like a child. “Lutheran sermons don’t comfort my soul any longer. What shall I do?”

Kristina had not been ordained, she was no pastor — how could she help another person in spiritual trouble? But she could not let her neighbor leave without some comfort; she would tell her what she herself believed, she would share her own convictions:

There were said to be more than a hundred religions in America. But there was only one God. In her heart she felt there could only be one. Yes, she was absolutely sure of it! Those hundred religions could therefore be nothing but people’s inventions which God didn’t pay any attention to. God could never have meant that the teachings of the Prince of Peace should cause strife and disunity and quarrels among people. And he surely did not intend that ministers should start fighting about a human soul as soon as it was born into the world. The ministers were wrong in fighting with each other for innocent babes in their cradles.

Nor did she believe a person’s eternal salvation depended on membership in one congregation or another. Each one must seek God until he or she found him, and then she would know what was right; then she need no longer worry about eternity.

If Manda now let them pour water on her in a new baptism, then her husband would suffer from this; even though they were husband and wife they would have to go to different churches on Sunday. This would hurt both Algot and herself. She would be doing something wrong; she would not be obeying God’s will.

Kristina’s honest advice to her neighbor was this: She must wait with her baptism until Algot no longer objected.

Manda had listened eagerly and when she left she said she would deeply ponder the advice given her. She understood that Kristina herself had peace and joy in her soul, and only such a person could help another human being.

Some time later the news spread that Algot and Manda Svensson had baptized their son in the Lutheran faith. They had made a bargain: The wife let the husband baptize their child in the old faith, the husband let the wife be baptized in the new.

— 3—

The settlers were living through a time of spiritual confusion. The hundred religions that were preached in North America caused Kristina great wonderment. She could not understand what separated the churches and the sects from one another. There were sects and offsprings of sects. Ulrika had said there were eight different kinds of Baptists alone in America. And there was the Institution of the Lutherans, the Immersion of the Baptists, and the Fulfillment Teaching of the Methodists. All kinds of teachings were preached, faith teachings, salvation teachings, eternity teachings, grace teachings. Who could keep them all in his head and explain them all? When Kristina read in Hemlandet about Congregationalists, Wesleyans, Unitarians, Episcopalians, it sounded to her like so many tribes of wild heathens.

And in this country Messiahs arose anew every year. Last year alone fourteen persons each insisted they were the returning Christ who had come to America. Several of them were put in insane asylums. There was indeed a confusion in faith and baptism: I would rather see a mother throw her child into the fire than. .

The Lutherans baptized in a font, the Baptists in the river — but could it really make a great deal of difference?

River or font? Christening water should be clear, pure, and unsullied, because it must blot out sins, but could it make any difference if it came from a well or a river?

One Sunday last spring Kristina had been invited to Stillwater to see the great baptismal festival of Ulrika’s brethren. The Baptists had their place of immersion some distance outside town in the St. Croix River. That Sunday there were eighteen converts to be received into the congregation and enjoy the rebirth of a baptismal bath. Kristina was permitted to view the consecration from the shore.

A great many people were gathered and those who were to be baptized were standing apart near a huge boulder on the shore, separated from those who already were members of the congregation. They were all dressed in wide, white shirts that covered their bodies from neck to heel; converts’ clothes were white as angels’ wings. Men and women were dressed alike, but bearded faces and short hair indicated who the men were. In the group of the converts Kristina noticed women older than herself, and one old man with a gray beard covering his shirt front, perhaps seventy years, yet here he was to be reborn like a child in the river water.

It was a warm Sunday with the water calm under the tall trees at the edge of the river; it was almost like a lake. In a rowboat, half pulled up on the shore, stood Ulrika’s husband, the congregations minister, Pastor Henry O. Jackson. His head was bare and he wore a black coat which hung to his knees. He had preached in barns and sawmills, in cabins and sheds — today the rowboat was his pulpit.

The pastor began to sing a hymn and the people on shore joined in. Ulrika had sung this song for Kristina and she recognized some of the words:

Down to the sacred wave

The Lord of Life was led;

And he who came our souls to save

In Jordan bowed his head.

He taught the solemn way;

He fixed the Holy rite;

He bade his ransomed ones obey,

And keep the path of Light.

The human voices rose powerfully under the clear sky; there was an eagerness and life in the Baptists’ singing that Kristina had never heard in a Lutheran church. The hymn about the Lord of Life echoed against the cliffs, rose heavenward, away from this fleeting world. It rose on the comforting assurance of another world that had no end. The congregation was filled with joy that eighteen people were to be reborn through baptism, their souls to enter the Kingdom of God.

Then the pastor in the boat began to speak to the white-garbed group on the shore.

Suddenly it seemed to Kristina that she had seen this before; her ears had heard this voice, her eyes had seen this gathering: a man in a boat, preaching to people in white garments on a shore! There had been men in long beards listening to the Word, standing quite still, as still as the cliff on which their feet rested. And on the riverbank rose high, brown hills. A wilderness land; she recognized it all! Where had she experienced this? Was it the memory of a picture that came to her mind? Only in one book could she have seen such a picture. Or was it an impression of something she had read in this book that changed into a vision: “The people of the land were baptized by him in the river, and they confessed their sins.”

A man spoke from a boat to the people on the shore. But it was another river, another shore, another time. The river’s name was Jordan, and it had happened many years ago.

Who was the man there in the boat? Who was it that spoke? He used English but she understood all he said, for it wasn’t the words she heard, it was the voice that uttered the words. She recognized it so well, the voice that once had welcomed them on the shores of this very river. The man in that boat had met them when they arrived, had brought them to his house and given them food. He had sheltered her and her children when they were without house and home. Will no one help us? they had asked. This man had answered them. Who was he? Who was the man in the boat on the river Jordan preaching love and mercy to the people on shore?

Was it Christ himself she beheld?

Kristina put her hand to her head, feeling dizzy. Was she dreaming? Was she forgetting that she was among sectarians? That she was viewing the great Baptist festival? For a moment she had forgotten that these people were said to teach a false religion; she had felt uplifted in her soul by their singing of a joyous hymn. Yet had the pastor of her own church been here today he would have shed tears of sorrow over these lost souls who were gathered here.

Now she saw the man in the black frock coat leave the boat and wade out into the river. He waded fully clothed, his long coattails dragging in the water behind him. He walked resolutely forward, now the water reached to his knees but he walked on. When the water reached to his waist he stopped and turned toward the shore and said something. He was calling a name.

Pastor Henry O. Jackson had commenced to distribute the sacrament of baptism to the white group on the shore; he called the first by name.

The oldest among them was to go first. The old man with the gray beard heard his name and waded slowly toward the pastor. He moved clumsily, awkwardly, he was not accustomed to walking in water; he stumbled, almost fell over some stones in the river bottom. The water splashed around his legs, his white garments were getting soaked.

But out there in the river stood the black-coated man who stretched his hand toward the man in the white shirt. Pastor Jackson received the old one, took a sturdy hold of his neck with his left hand and laid his right against the man’s chest. For a few moments both stood still. Then the pastors hands became active: He pressed the old one’s head and chest under water. The white-garbed one had vanished; the pastor stood alone in the river.

Kristina held her breath, moved her hand quickly to her mouth; she had almost cried out: He’ll drown!

She waited, perhaps only a few seconds, but the waiting was tantalizing. Pastor Jackson read something, probably the baptismal prayer, then the gray beard popped up out of the water, the hair well slicked down over the skull. Water dripped from his forehead and neck after the immersion. The pastor let go his grip and the old one stumbled as if ready to fall. Pastor Jackson steadied him by his shoulders. Finally he laid his hands on the old man’s chest, probably to bless him.

The old man had experienced his rebirth and began to wade back to the shore, splashing the water with his legs in his insecure, unsteady walk. Water fell in large drops from his beard, ran in runnels from his hair. He coughed, spitted, and cleared his throat; water had gotten into his mouth and nose. The white shroud clung to his body as he stepped ashore and was met by fellow believers who took him by the hands and led him to their flock. The congregation greeted their new member in a communal outcry, hands were raised over his head — the brethren also wished to call down the Lord’s blessings upon him.

. . and as He rose from the waters, lo, then were the heavens opened. .

The immersion went on, Pastor Jackson calling for one proselyte convert after another. And each in turn hearkened to his call and waded out in the river and was immersed with his whole body. All were baptized in the stream — in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Ghost, like unto a rebirth, a new body.

The eighteenth and last was a tender girl with heavy golden hair falling far down her back. Her head was dipped and when it came up again tufts of hair stuck round her head — it seemed evil, hairy water snakes had stuck to her down there and clung to her.

The girl almost fell on her face as she walked back to the shore; she had stumbled on something. The pastor grabbed her under the arms, lifted her up, and led her ashore. Trembling, the girl huddled in her soaked, tight-clinging dress. Only a short time before had the ice broken up on the river, the last floes were barely melted. It hurt Kristina to see the poor girl so cold after the immersion — she walked like a dizzy person.

After the sacrament in the river the newborn were given warm milk and cake at the pastors home. Ulrika told Kristina that the converts needed a hot drink after their soaking or they might catch cold. She herself had been taken with a terrible influenza when her husband gave her the immersion sacrament in the St. Croix River in the spring of 1851; that whole summer she had gone with a dripping nose, blowing it and blowing until she almost blew the tip of it away.

In the evening Pastor Jackson caught a ride on a settler wagon to Marine, where he would hold a supper meeting. When Ulrika was alone with her guest in the living room she wondered what Kristina thought of the baptismal celebration.

“I wouldn’t want to be dipped down like that!”

“Why not?”

“Terrible to be pushed under!”

It had hurt Kristina to see the participants get water in their mouth, nose and ears, and see them stumble like dizzy people after the baptism. In her catechism she had learned that it was not the power of the water — water was something external. And the amount of water at a baptism could not have anything to do with the sacrament. She herself had been baptized in a font. Weren’t a few handfuls of water sufficient for the entrance into God’s kingdom? Why did they need a whole river?

Mrs. Jackson explained that every part of the old body, with real sin and original sin — the whole sin-carcass — must be immersed, washed, in order for it to be a real baptism. The Lutherans only splashed a few drops over the head, just fooling around. The Lutherans called themselves baptized but all their carnal lusts remained with them.

“Why do they put on white shirts?” wondered Kristina.

“Before the converts step into the water they dress in the clothes of the new body. The Lutherans wear their same old sin rags throughout life!”

Ulrika had been saved from Lutheranism’s false teachings. She had never wanted to be a Lutheran in the first place; she had been told that she had fought when baptized as a child, crying so loudly the whole time that not one of the minister’s words was heard, and flailing her arms against the book. Only since she came to America and met Henry had she learned that the Baptists were the true followers of Christ, the only ones who lived like the Saviour himself when he walked on earth. The first Christian congregation was a Baptist congregation.

“St. John is called John the Baptist in English! He was the first Baptist!”

“Is that really the truth?” said Kristina.

“Of course! I didn’t know myself before I learned English that John was the first Baptist. Our religion is named after him. It says in the Bible that John baptized Jesus in the river Jordan!”

“Yes, I know that.”

“The Saviour was thirty years old. Jesus was a grown man when he let John baptize him.”

“I guess he never was baptized as a child.”

“Of course not! God wanted his son to be a Baptist!”

What Kristina heard was fresh news to her, but she wasn’t quite convinced.

“But you can read in the Bible that Jesus let himself be baptized when grown. That proves he was a Baptist!” Ulrika decided.

“You mean that John handled Jesus in the same way as Jackson handled the people today? Did he dip him under the water, big as he was?”

“Of course he did!”

“It sounds unreasonable.”

“Take a peek in Holy Writ! If it isn’t in the Lutheran Bible those devils must have hidden it. The same as they concealed from the Swedes that John was called the Baptist.”

Ulrika had often explained to Kristina the great difference between Lutherans and Baptists: The Lutherans used their religion for Sundays only, the Baptists used theirs every day of the week. Consequently Ulrika and those of her faith were like the first Christians.

A silence ensued, then Kristina said: “You mean I’m wrong in my faith?”

Ulrika patted her feelingly on the arm and spoke like a mother to a dear, lost child: “You’re baptized in the wrong religion, Kristina, but you can’t help it. The Lord will have mercy on you because you’re a good person!”

Ulrika continued to explain the tenets of the Baptists, especially those concerning immersion. Kristina listened, her thoughts deep within her. She put questions to herself and she received answers.

What did she know and believe for sure? That she was one life among the others of the Creation, that she belonged to the Creator and was lost without him. Once she had felt as if God didn’t exist, but he had given her proof which would last for the rest of her life. And if she hadn’t had God to trust in since coming to America, her despair would have wrecked her and she couldn’t have survived to this day.

But did she know anything more for sure? She couldn’t tell which was right: to be baptized as a child or as a grown person; to splash the head or immerse the body; to be baptized in a font or in a river stream.

River or font? Was she baptized wrongly or rightly? She didn’t know. But she didn’t care, it couldn’t hurt her soul in eternity whichever way.

Whatever was right, Kristina would remain with her baptism and her God to the end of her days.

X. THE ASTRAKHAN APPLE TREE BLOOMS

— 1—

There were no frosty nights this spring; even, suitable warmth prevailed while the earth was being prepared for seeding, and afterward mild, slow rains fell. All the grasses, herbs, and plants — cultivated and wild — shot up in a few days and grew in such lushness and abundance as the settlers had never before seen. The colder the winter the milder the spring. When they bored the sugar maples the sap flowed more plentifully than ever; the more severe the winter cold the greater the flow of nourishing fluid in the trees. The weather gave promise of blessed crops next fall.

And the Astrakhan apple tree at the gable blossomed for the fourth time.

For three consecutive springs the blooms on the tree had frozen. This year they remained their full time, this year the apple tree would bear fruit for the first time.

A sapling had grown up from seeds that had come from Kristina’s parental home, Duvemåla in Sweden, and now the sapling had grown into a tree. Kristina had worried lest the young roots freeze and die in the cold Minnesota winters. During the cold season the naked, icy branches poked up through the snowdrift against the wall as if reaching for help. But each year anew the large, rough, hairy leaves decked it in green.

And now Kristina’s tree had reached its fruiting age. Never before had it displayed so many blossoms. The white-pink flowers hung in clusters, and unharmed by frost or wind they lived their lives to fullness. Then the branches shed their flower clusters and the fruiting began. As the mild spring days passed, the limbs became covered with tiny green nuts; by summer the tiny apples crowded each other for space. The swelling of the fruit could be noticed from day to day; within a few summer weeks they would grow into large, juicy apples.

The Swedish tree bore a noble fruit; Kristina’s mouth watered as she thought of the fresh taste only Astrakhan apples offered. In this taste her childhood memories lay embedded: In the mornings when she picked the fallen fruit she would split an apple by squeezing it in her hand; then she would count the seed compartments: each apple had five, always five. The fragrance of the fresh fruit filled her nostrils like morning’s own breath. She would bite into the apple, bite through its transparent skin to which the dew still clung, and moistened her lips.

Here the Astrakhan apples were said to ripen in August. This autumn Kristina’s own children would for the first time taste the fruit of a noble tree from the country where their mother had grown up. She pointed to the green, unripe fruit; soon they could eat the kind of apples she had eaten at home. How delicious they were! But they must not touch them until the apples were ripe!

Kristina would be able to show her children how she had transplanted part of her childhood from the Old Country to the New.

— 2—

From the world outside their home came further evil tidings. The Civil War — predicted to last only a summer — had gone on through the whole winter, and this spring it took on still greater proportions in combat and bitterness. During the first year the North and the South had fought each other to train, as it were, but during the second year the soldiers were experienced and knew how to handle their weapons. Consequently the war grew bloodier.

The long-awaited successes of the North were not yet apparent, but the adversities were smaller than during the first year. The great trouble was that the Southern generals remained as clever as before while the Northern commanders were as incapable as ever. Karl Oskar had subscribed to the Minnesota Pioneer, printed in St. Paul, and he tried to follow the war in English. His two oldest sons, who read the language well, were very helpful to him. The news was seldom encouraging. But he still trusted fully the country’s leader whom he had helped elect: Old Abe would put everything in order! Lincoln would save the Union! Sometimes, however, he wondered if he trusted so much in the President because he wished to rely on his own ability to select the man.

They had not yet heard anything about the threatened draft. The North still had as many volunteers as they could train and equip. The number of soldiers increased on both sides.

The Civil War grew by and by to be the greatest war in the world to date.

The war was remarkable in another way also, if not inexplicable. Peoples who had warred against each other in the Old World fought side by side in the New World. English and Irish, Germans and French, Austrians and Italians all fought in the Northern army for the preservation of the Union. Immigrants from different nations in the Old World went of their own free will to jeopardize their lives for the right to remain one single nation in the New World.

When Karl Oskar read about this in the Minnesota Pioneer he wondered why these people hadn’t been able to live in peace in their homelands when they could be friends and fight side by side in America.

But the rumblings of war to the south were now part of their daily life and did not cause much concern among the Minnesota settlers. In New Duvemåla life went on without disturbing events. With the arrival of spring Kristina felt almost as well as before, indeed, she considered herself fully recuperated. With the help of Marta, whose handiness daily increased, Kristina had now resumed her chores. All seemed well in their house.

During the days the man and wife labored industriously, as they had done during their twenty years of marriage. But during the nights a change had taken place in their lives; during the nights Karl Oskar had no wife and Kristina no husband.

They enjoyed their rest in the same room, at opposite sides of the room, in different beds. The distance was not great from bed to bed, there were no miles between them, only six or seven easy paces. But there might as well have been a road a thousand miles long: the great ocean they once crossed could not have separated them more completely.

Six words continued to echo deep in Karl Oskar’s ears: Next childbed will be her death.

A great denial had been laid upon him. He went without one joy he had shared with his wife during all their years. It was something essential for a healthy man — the way he felt it. A sudden interruption had taken place in a habit of many years. Now when he lay down on his bed in the evening he was assailed by the demands of his unsatisfied body. He felt his sex as a burden, it annoyed and irritated him. It took longer for him to go to sleep, and he slept restlessly and in fits.

How far away from a man is the woman he must never approach?

He noticed that his wife also lay awake long after going to bed. He could hear her stir in her bed, move and turn. And he need not guess how she felt.

Sometimes they would talk for a while from their separate beds across the room before they wished each other goodnight. They spoke of the work they had done today, what they would do tomorrow — about anything except that which filled their thoughts: They were not allowed to sleep together.

Both missed deeply the bodily contact they had shared for twenty years. After being together and having satisfied their desires, often the moments of their deepest confidences arose when they could say things otherwise suppressed through embarrassment. Then they opened to each other all that otherwise was locked in. They spoke of the life they had shared, in the Old World and in the New, they spoke of death which awaited them sometime, death which would separate them. And they talked of eternity which had no end. Then Kristina would speak of her soul’s conviction: Death would not separate them forever, only for a short time. They would meet again. They would meet in the life that would last — eternity.

The meeting of their bodies had for them become the moments of intimacy which opened their souls to each other.

Month after month Karl Oskar endured his denial. But the longer he was denied the more he suffered from his denial. The longer his body was denied what it craved, the more often it craved it. His thoughts were busy with just the things they were not allowed to be busy with. A remembrance of lust and joy in days gone by increased the present lack of it. The good moments he had shared with Kristina excited and stimulated him. In his dreams he was with her again as before — he awakened in terror: What had he done to her. .? What had he done?

Next childbed. . Six words hummed in his ears as a warning bell, a threatening reminder to be on guard night and day.

— 3—

During the Whitsuntide holidays Ulrika came for a visit and could both see and hear that Kristina had regained her health. She could see new clothes the settler wife had sewn for the children on her new sewing machine; a carpet loom was put up and the carpets were expected to be ready for Midsummer. And Kristina showed her the tree at the east gable wall: The Swedish tree would bear apples for the first time this summer! She could see the apples grow in size from day to day! And she promised Ulrika a bushelful next fall.

It was Ulrika who had carried the doctor’s order to Karl Oskar concerning his wife, and that was three months ago. They had not seen her since. Now Ulrika’s eyes seemed to say that she felt sorry for him, and this made him feel uncomfortable.

Ulrika knew. She had shared in something that ought to have stayed between him and Kristina. She was sharing the secrets of a married couple, and this was wrong. No third person should have knowledge of this. The Baptist minister’s wife was Kristina’s good friend, but he himself had not entirely accepted her. He supposed this had to do with his knowledge of her Swedish activities as parish whore which he couldn’t forget. He didn’t fully trust Ulrika of Västergöhl, formerly known as the Glad One. She was a talkative woman, she did not willingly keep quiet. If it had been up to him she would not have been in on the secret.

On her way home Mrs. Jackson had to make a call in Center City, and Karl Oskar drove her there. They were alone on the wagon.

She said, “I’m glad Kristina is well again.”

“Yes, I am too.”

“You can thank the Lord for that!” Ulrika turned and searched the driver’s face. “But you! You’ve lost weight, Karl Oskar!”

“I lose a little every year. It’s the heat here in Minnesota.”

“You needn’t blame the heat! Not to me! I know what it is! I know what you need!”

He did not reply. He jerked the reins and urged the horses on; damn that Ulrika must know!

“I want to tell you, Karl Oskar; I feel sorry for you!”

“You needn’t!” His reply was short.

“You have to lie in that ox pen! How you must suffer during the nights! You get hotter that way, of course!”

In one way Mrs. Henry O. Jackson was still Ulrika of Västergöhl, thought Karl Oskar. She could spew forth almost anything. At times she still talked like the parish whore, especially when she talked to men. He disliked women who talked that way.

“Poor you! You must go without and suffer! Nothing else left for you, because you care for Kristina!”

“A wife isn’t for bedplay only!”

“But a healthy man needs a woman! It must be hard on you! Don’t pretend to me!”

He had some crushing words on the tip of his tongue but he bit them off. And he decided that he would not reply to her any more.

Ulrika continued to describe the tortures a healthy man must endure when he was denied a woman, but from now on only her voice was heard on the wagon; the driver sat completely silent. Why, she wondered, did he keep so silent?

Yes, Ulrika wondered about Karl Oskar. Old as he was she had been able to embarrass him. He was a father many times over but as shy as an untried youth. Here he sat beside her now, embarrassed and blushing like a little boy who had just messed in his pants and didn’t dare tell anybody. But there was something attractive about strong, rough men who could feel embarrassed as Karl Oskar did. They were like little boys who needed a woman’s hand to help unbutton the fly. And it was such boy-men women liked to help if they had an opportunity. Now she felt sorry for Karl Oskar because he couldn’t find help with some woman.

Karl Oskar reined the horses to a stop in front of Persson’s Store. He was going to make some purchases from Klas Albert, and his woman rider had errands elsewhere. With a sigh of relief he saw Mrs. Henry O. Jackson get off his wagon.

— 4—

It was an evening in May; Karl Oskar had gone to bed and said goodnight to his wife. As long as day lighted him he had remained in the field preparing it for the corn. With some satisfaction he stretched his tired limbs in the bed. He was waiting for sleep. Crickets chirruped in the grass and trees outside — those screech-hoppers kept on without end in the spring nights, like an eternally buzzing spinning wheel.

But above this familiar, persistent noise from outside he heard a padding sound here in the room: steps of bare feet across the floor. Quickly he lifted his head from the pillow.

Kristina stood at his bed. White linen against the dark of the room — Kristina stood there in her shift.

He thought she had already gone to sleep.

“You’re up?!”

“Yes.”

“Are you sick, Kristina?”

“No.”

“What is it then? Something wrong?”

“Don’t worry — nothing is wrong with me.”

“But what do you want?”

“I’m coming back to you.”

“What did you say?”

“I want to be your wife again. .”

In a sudden motion he sat up in his bed: “You want to. .? What are you saying?!”

“You heard me. I think we should sleep together again. Here I am. .”

For more than three months they had kept apart. Tonight she had unexpectedly come to his bed, saying: Here I am!

He bent forward, trying to look his wife in the face for an explanation, but it was too dark.

“I’ve come back to you, Karl Oskar. Don’t you want me?”

“Are you walking in your sleep, Kristina?”

“I’m awake!”

“Is your head all right?”

“Don’t worry — I’m all right. .”

Her voice seemed all right; she spoke slowly, calmly — she was not sick, she wasn’t out of her head, she wasn’t walking in her sleep, she was fully awake. Her mind was all right and she came to him and wanted to be his wife again.

He was stunned; in his confusion he stuttered: “You. . you, you don’t. . you don’t know what you’re doing! You forget yourself!”

“I’m not forgetting myself. I’ve thought it over, really.”

“But you know as well as I — it mustn’t happen!”

“Karl Oskar — it can’t go on like this any longer between us two. It’s unbearable. You haven’t complained, but I know how you suffer. .”

She sat down next to him on the bed. He felt her warm breath on his ear; he took her around the waist, his hands trembling.

What was the matter with Kristina? What had come over her? Was she feverish? He stroked her cheek but it felt cool, her forehead, but it wasn’t fever-hot. She was herself in all ways, and her senses and thoughts were clear. Yet she had walked the road between their beds which they were not allowed to walk — she had traversed the distance that had separated them for three months.

“Don’t worry!” Her voice was confident, sure. “I know what I’m doing.”

“But next time!” he cried out. “There must not be a next time for you! Don’t you remember what the doctor said!”

“I don’t believe in what the doctor said — he’s not omnipotent.”

“But something was injured and that he must know. .”

“I am not afraid.”

“But your life — we can’t take a chance. .”

“The Almighty alone rules over my life.”

“It’s dangerous — how dare you. .”

“It is simple — I don’t pay any attention to the doctor. I trust in God.”

Her mouth was near his ear; she whispered: He asked how she dare? Must she no longer believe she was under the Almighty’s protection? Must she now doubt God who had seen them unharmed through all the dangers and vicissitudes of their emigration? Must she think that God would not look after her through one more childbed?

And it was not God who had forbidden them to live together. On the contrary, it was his will that married people should have each other. And God must know they loved each other. It was a human order that kept them apart — why must they obey humans? Didn’t they dare trust in the Creator’s wisdom?

Karl Oskar had been told. Now he knew why she had come to him. But he was not at ease, he must think, he must use common sense. It was true that at their emigration he had exposed his wife and children to great dangers to life and limb. But that time, as always, it had been his responsibility. And he had thought it over thoroughly before reaching the final decision.

Kristina trusted God in his heaven more than the doctor in Stillwater. But Karl Oskar trusted more in the doctor than in God.

“You must understand.” His speech was thick, his throat felt too narrow to let air through. “Kristina! I don’t dare!”

“Don’t dare? Why?”

“I must think of you. Even if you don’t. .”

“I’m not afraid. .”

“It could be fatal!”

“We’re all well. Thanks to whom? What do you think?”

Who was Kristina’s helper? Where was her confidence? Her strength and security? Who had given her the courage to come to him tonight?

She had no fear, and therefore she was stronger than he. Her courage could not be defeated in a few groping words: It might be fatal! And he had dared assume responsibility before, many times — why didn’t he dare now?

The crickets were still screeching unceasingly outside the window; those invisible critters were noisier than anything else in the spring night. Inside the house all was silent except for a man and a wife who spoke in whispers. Even if someone had stood beside the bed he would not have heard what they said.

His hand stroked her neck. His hands knew her body.

She said: “I trust in the Creator. It is his will if I live, it’s his will if I die. .”

“But must I let you dare. . your life. .”

“Whatever you and I do — he will do with me what he wants.”

In his mind Karl Oskar was still resisting: Use your common sense! But he was dazed by the demanding force in his body — a force that had already surrendered him to his wife in the moment when she stood at his bedside and said: I’m back with you!

She remained with him, and he yielded his body.

XI. KRISTINA IS NOT AFRAID

— 1—

Along the shores of Lake Chisago runs a path that has been trod by Indians and deer; here the Indians hunted the deer as the animals sought their way to the lake to drink of its water.

The path goes in sharp twists and bends around fallen tree trunks, leaves the lakeshore at moors and bogs where the ground sinks under foot, penetrates deep brambles and bushes, turns sharply away from holes, steep cliffs, and ravines, disappears in the undergrowth with its thorny, pricking spikes. Winding, wriggling its way, it never leaves the shore; as the wanderer least expects it he is met by the glittering water before him and his path lightens.

This path is without beginning or end, for it runs around the whole Indian lake Ki-Chi-Saga with its hundreds of inlets and bays and points and promontories, islands, and islets. Of old it was tramped only by the deer and the hunter people’s light feet, shod in the skin of the deer. Now the redskins are seldom seen on the road they themselves trampled out through the wilderness. It is used by another people, who have come from far away, of another hue: The whites now wear away the bared roots with their heavy footgear, wooden shoes, iron-shod boots, crunching, crushing heels. These people also break their own roads through the forest, straight roads, cutting through the grave mounds of the Indians. These people are in a hurry and cannot waste their time on the meandering Indian paths.

On an evening in June, one of the immigrant women walks on this path. It is near sunset yet she walks slowly. Her steps are short, perhaps tired. She doesn’t tramp heavily on the Indian path and she is in no hurry.

Kristina is out in the forest, looking for a cow, Jenny, named after a Swedish singer with this name who has recently been to America, and about whom Hemlandet has had much to report. Jenny did not come home with the other cows this evening; she is ready to calve almost any day now, and that is why Kristina was concerned when she was missing this evening. Once before Jenny has had her calf out in the woods; Johan and Harald had found her then, far out in a bog, and had managed to get the cow home with the calf uninjured. Perhaps Jenny was repeating her forest calving. Or had she been caught between some boulders, unable to free herself? All this wilderness is full of crevices and holes where grazing cattle might easily break their legs.

Kristina stops now and then, calls the name of the lost cow, calls until she is hoarse, but the only replies are her own calls, echoing back from the tree trunks. The cows know their milkmaid’s voice and will answer with a soft lowing when she calls them. She stops short on the path, listens intently, but no sound from Jenny reaches her ears.

It is already growing dark among the trees. Should she turn back without having fulfilled her errand? No, she must look a little bit farther. She is not afraid of losing her way after dark, for she knows the lake path well — she has only to follow it back the same way she came.

In a clearing where grow tall, lush raspberry bushes she stops to eat of the berries. The wild raspberries are already ripe, although it is only June. She crouches near one bush and enjoys the sweet fruit. She loves to go out in the woods in summertime to pick all the wild, edible berries that grow here. To her it is a means of liberation and of being alone, a welcome change in the monotony of daily chores. And in fall she likes to pick cranberries that abound on the tussocks in low-lying places. But no lingonberries grow here, as in Sweden; instead of lingonberries she preserves the somewhat sourer cranberries; in fact, they do have a taste of sweetness if picked after the frost has set in.

Darkness falls, yet she is not aware of it. Kristina will never cease to be surprised at the urgency of the twilight in America; it rushes by. Tonight it seems to last only five short minutes.

In her childhood in Sweden she had been afraid of the dark. This feeling had remained with her through youth, and she had been terribly afraid of the dark during the first years after their arrival here. Then a change had taken place; the fear of the dark left her. She does not know when this happened. It was only thus: One evening she noticed her fear was gone. From then on it made no difference to her if it was day or night. It might be daylight, or dark, in the place she happened to be, but which ever it was — she was not afraid. However great the difference between day and night she did not feel it. And now it is this way: Be she outside or in a house, it doesn’t matter. She walks as calmly through a dark night as through the bright morning, because she feels herself within the same safe protection, the same secure home, in the dark of night as in the light of day. She knows nothing evil can happen to her. She cannot understand how darkness and night could have frightened her so before. On the contrary, it now seems to her she is best protected when veiled in darkness. It envelops her, hides her, follows her to guard her welfare, just as it must comfort the many of God’s creatures that hide in brambles and bushes from enemies and pursuers.

But she can no longer search for her cow Jenny; it is too late now. She must return home. First thing in the morning they will send the boys out to look for the animal; Johan and Harald enjoy hikes in the forest, they have just begun to hunt, they know the places where a cow might hide. Or perhaps Karl Oskar had better go with them, in case the cow is caught somewhere.

Kristina turns homeward on the path. But the fatigue after her day’s many chores falls upon her like a burden, and she sits down to rest on an upthrust root. Weakness still comes over her at times, and against this neither rest nor peace helps. And her thoughts have dwelled upon this: Is there any permanent cure against fatigue other than death?

Is there anything sweeter than to awaken in the morning completely rested?

She sits, surrounded by darkness, on the old tree trunk. She is alone in the wild woods, completely defenseless against anyone wishing to harm her. But she is not afraid. She feels as secure and protected as a child who has climbed up on its mother’s knee.

Nor is she alone. This is a moment of meditation for her, a moment to think over what has just happened to her. For something has happened: She is pregnant again. She has just become sure: God has created a new life in her.

The last time this happened she had sinned gravely, and he chastised her and took back his creation. This time she has received assurance that she is again worthy. She enjoys God’s confidence again. She has received his grace; he trusts her.

The curse has been removed from Kristina and she is again a blessed woman.

One night last month Karl Oskar and Kristina had again become husband and wife, and immediately this had taken place, it must have occurred as soon as it could. It was understandable that it should happen at their first, intense being together. After all, it was as if they had been married for a second time. And these last weeks they had lived like a newly wedded couple, who had long suffered in their impatient expectancy. It is a blissful time that has been granted them. And it began just as spring broke. Her Astrakhan tree was in full bloom then and this seemed to her a good omen.

Kristina is not afraid; all will be well.

As yet only a few days have passed since she learned for sure what had taken place. While she was still uncertain she had not wished to tell Karl Oskar, but now she must no longer delay. She knows in advance how he will take it: It is he who is afraid! She has noticed how worried he has been ever since they started to be together again. She knows him so well, she knows his reactions to one thing or another. In his eyes she has all the time read his anxiety: What have I done? What have I exposed you to? What will happen? When will it happen?

Now it has happened, and he must be told at once. Karl Oskar, who is so afraid of this next childbed — how sorry she feels for him. Now he will be terribly scared, and this she must prevent.

He believes blindly in the Stillwater doctor, that’s why he is concerned about her. He’ll be worried to death now if she doesn’t give him courage. Men can’t stand as much as women. They are more easily frightened by what they fear might happen. She must calm him; all will come out well.

While Kristina sits on the tree trunk this evening in the forest, it comes clearly to her — all that she must say to Karl Oskar: Listen to me now! I have news! I’m pregnant again! You expected it, you know that — you expected it and you were afraid of it! You haven’t said anything but I’ve seen how scared you’ve been. But now you must stop! Now you needn’t fear, because it’s already happened. It’s nothing to worry about — everything will be all right as before. I’ve been with child eight times and all has come out well in the end. Why not this time? Believe me, Karl Oskar, it will!

I have figured out the time — February. Yes, sometime in February, because it happened in May, the very first time, I’m sure. And no wonder — or what do you think, Karl Oskar?

But now you mustn’t worry about it while I have my time of waiting. Please, Karl Oskar, I beg you — don’t worry the least little bit during this time! Don’t feel you’ve done something wrong! It’s no sin to be with your wife, it’s no evil thing to make her pregnant! Your mind must be at rest; you must have the same confidence as I. Why won’t you?

Now you hear what I say, Karl Oskar: Forget what the doctor said! Don’t think about it any more. It only makes you unhappy. Forget it! Cheer up!

All will be well with me when my time comes. Eight times I’ve gone through it successfully. Who has helped me those times? Who do you think? He will help me this time also! You must know I’m in good hands!

So she will speak to Karl Oskar. But what will he answer?

Kristina remains seated on the fallen tree and forgets time. The evening wears on. She begins to feel a chill on her bare legs; some nights in June are chilly. She pulls her skirt around her knees; now she must go home. She hadn’t meant to sit here and rest such a long time. But her mind had been full of her new pregnancy and her worries about Karl Oskar. Now she knows what to say, how to weigh her words when she speaks to him.

She rises and continues homeward on the path. Now it is as dark as it can be in the forest. She can hardly see where to put her foot down. Twigs brush her in the face as she walks, she bends down to avoid them; she must walk slowly in this darkness. But she has tramped this path hundreds of times during the years they have lived here; she knows where it bends and turns, she will not lose it. But she must take slow steps or she might hurt herself against trees or roots.

Still, her foot stumbles and she almost falls.

She regains her balance and is ready to go on when a tall apparition takes shape through the dark. Someone is coming toward her on the path, someone who tramps heavily, in solid, booted feet. A large man takes shape a few feet in front of her.

And Kristina suddenly pulls back a few steps in front of her. Suddenly a weight has fallen on her heart. What is this? Who is this walking on the path?

She takes a few steps backward, her hands on her throat as if in protection. She is utterly still.

The apparition has stopped in front of her.

“I hope I didn’t scare you?”

“Karl Oskar!”

“You’re late — I was getting worried.”

“It turned dark so quickly. .”

“Well, yes, that’s what I thought. That’s why I came. .”

“Have I been looking for the cow so long that you had to look for me!”

“Did you find the cow?”

“No, I didn’t. She might be stuck somewhere. .”

Karl Oskar and Kristina resume their homeward walk on the path. They walk side by side, but the path is so narrow they find it difficult to walk beside each other; at times he must go ahead a bit, then wait for her when the path broadens.

And now as they walk together here in the dark forest she feels the moment has come to tell him:

She tells him what has happened to her, she tells him everything she has thought of while sitting on the tree trunk, she says all in a few minutes, all she has intended to tell him.

Kristina wishes to share with her husband her own unwavering confidence and conviction:

She will survive her ninth childbed.

— 2—

A settler wife’s evening prayer:

. . yes, dear God. . it was terrible. . worse than I had ever feared. . He was frightened beyond reason. Never have I seen him so frightened as tonight. . never! I couldn’t help no matter what I said. Therefore I wish to pray to you, dear God — help me! Help me reassure Karl Oskar! Help me remove the anxiety from him! For he cannot carry on like this all the time till February. .

I myself. . I know not what to do any more. . but I trust in you, dear God. You are the only one who can remove the fear from my husband. Don’t let Karl Oskar worry! Tell him there’s no danger! Now he only says everything is his fault, his responsibility. But you — you know all, you know how it happened. .

Myself. . I’ll do all I can to help him in this. But I’m so tired, dear God, you know how tired I am. .

XII. AND A NEW CIVIL WAR BROKE OUT

The Cause:

According to the Mendota Agreement the government was to pay the Sioux in western Minnesota the sum of $70,000 in gold during 1861. By the beginning of 1862 this debt had not been paid. Meanwhile, famine raged among the Indians and their situation was greatly worsened by the intensely cold winter. Their spokesmen several times dunned the government agents for money but were sent away empty-handed. While the Sioux waited in vain for their money, disturbance arose in their camp. Red Iron, a prominent Sioux chief, had met with Alexander Ramsey, governor of Minnesota, for negotiations which took place at Mankato in October 1861.

Red Chief Speaks to White Chief at Mankato:

Man does not own the earth. What he does not own he cannot sell. What no one can sell no one can buy. Your people, Wliite Chief, therefore cannot buy the earth. All objects you can move from one place to another may be bought. A horse, a bow, a buffalo hide you can buy. But the land you cannot pick up and move from one place to another.

My people do not own this land and therefore we cannot sell it to your people. We have only granted your people the right to use this ground and live on it. All the gold and silver you might offer us — be it even enough to fill our valleys to the very brim — would not buy from us the beautiful hunting grounds the Great Father gave to our forefathers. We will not give up the graves of our fathers for all the money in the world.

My people have been forced to let your people use this land. Your chiefs have given us paper with written promises of sufficient gold to sustain our lives. We have waited for many moons in our camps but this gold has not arrived. We are still waiting.

Your people are rich, my people are poor. Your people have fine buildings, my people live in poor wigwams. Your fires are warm, our fires are not able to keep out the cold. The white children are strong and well fed, our children are weak and starved. Your people have food in great plenty, my people are sick from hunger. Your storehouses are filled, my people have no storehouses. Deer and elk will soon be gone, the fish in our lakes disappear. Soon the snow will fall over the ground and hunting will be over. Soon ice will cover the waters and we will not be able to catch the fish. How then will my people live?

We cannot survive in this country without food. Without food we shall perish. As deer in the forest and fish in the lakes diminish and disappear, so our people will disappear and die.

We have surrendered our hunting grounds and our fathers’ graves. Soon there will be no place in this land where we can bury our dead. We have no land left for our graves. Your people have taken our land and will not give space even for our dead bodies.

Our Great Father will see his children die in the land he has given them to possess. We will only leave our bones, to whiten aboveground. When our bones have turned to dust there will be nothing more left of our people. Your people alone will possess that beautiful land our Great Father once gave his children.

Thus spake Red Chief to White Chief at Mankato.

The Start:

On August 18, 1862, there arrived for the government agent at Fort Ridgely the $70,000 in gold which was overdue the Sioux tribes of western Minnesota.

It was exactly one day too late. The day before, the Indians had begun to exact their claim in settlers’ blood.

— 1—

It began on Sunday, August 17, on Sven Danjelsson’s homestead near Acton in Meeker County.

Sven had staked out his claim of 160 acres close to a small reedy lake a mile from Acton, and even before his marriage he had built a log cabin and cleared a few acres. After their wedding the previous autumn, Sven and Ragnhild had moved to the claim and lived there during the winter. In the spring they had done their first sowing and planting, and their first crops were now ready to be harvested.

Danjel Andreasson and his son Olof, who was three years younger than Sven, had early in spring promised to help the young couple with their first crop. Ragnhild was expecting a child and did not feel strong. On Friday evening, the fifteenth, Danjel and Olof arrived at the new clearing near Acton. Sven was pleased with the prospect of help from his father and brother; now his young wife need not overwork herself during the harvest, so close before her delivery; Ragnhild was in the last month of her pregnancy.

On Saturday Sven started to mow his rye, his father bound the sheaves after him, and his brother put them in shocks. Before evening the field was finished, but Danjel and Olof would remain over Sunday to help with the wheat during the following week.

During Sunday forenoon a Swedish neighbor came to visit the family. His name was Ivar Eriksson, a young man about Svens age. He brought with him his two children, a boy four years old and a girl of three. Ivar and Sven had helped each other with work and were good friends.

The neighbor and his children stayed for Sunday dinner with the Danjelsson family. It was a humid summer day. At table the men talked about the crops and the intense heat; it was now about as warm as it ever was in Minnesota in August — how long would the heat wave last? This weather suited the settlers until the crops were in, even though they perspired greatly in their work in the fields.

Dinner over and Danjel having read the prayer of thanks, the men sought shade outside to enjoy their rest. The coolest place was at the back of the log house. Ragnhild remained inside to wash the dishes, and the neighbor children stayed in with her to play on the floor.

The four men stretched out in the grass against the wall.

During dinner Ivar Eriksson had happened to mention that some Indians had been seen near Acton yesterday, but he thought this was of no particular significance since the redskins frequently appeared in groups nowadays. Some of the Sioux had camped in Meeker before and had always been friendly; they had disturbed neither him nor any other settler in the vicinity. However, someone who had seen the Indians yesterday insisted their faces were painted red, whatever that might mean.

Sven Danjelsson had replied that sometimes the Indians painted their faces just for the fun of it, to be dressed up like. They enjoyed everything that glittered and shone, they would deck themselves out in anything they might lay hands on, they were like children in that respect. If one of them found a colorful rooster feather he would immediately put it in his hair. To look really festive they would rub their hair with bear fat until it seemed they had been ducked in a kettle of grease.

Ragnhild told about several squaws who had come to the house during the winter, their poor children blue in the face from cold; she had given them whatever clothing she could spare. Sven said she had given them more than she could spare, she had coughed the whole winter because she was dressed too lightly.

Pleasantly sated, the men were dozing at the wall. Half asleep they noticed some Indians approach the house from the forest.

Sven Danjelsson arose to meet the callers — six Sioux. Their faces were not painted; he did not suspect any treachery. It did surprise him, though, that all six carried new guns; he had not seen Indians with guns before. He recognized two of the men, who had often come to the cabin to beg for food. They had always been given something and they had always appeared friendly. They spoke a little English, a few words for food, and their request had always been the same: They were hungry, could they have some potatoes today?

It was the same today. Sven replied that he would go and pick some potatoes for them; usually they ate the tubers raw.

He picked up a basket and went toward the potato field, about two hundred yards from the house. The other three men had remained in the shade of the house, but as the Indians now approached, they rose and watched their movements with some concern.

The savages split up into two groups: Three men walked into the cabin while three snooped around the outhouses, apparently looking for food. They caught sight of the small chicken house which Sven had hammered together; inside a setting hen was on her eggs. Startled by their approach the hen rose with a cackle from her nest and ran away. The Indians threw themselves over the nest, grabbed the eggs, and seemed to swallow them, shell and all. Not one single egg was left. The yolks were running down their chins.

Sven Danjelsson had just reached the potato field when he heard the cackle of the frightened hen. He turned and saw the visitors plunder the nest. He had promised them potatoes — why must they now steal from him? Enraged, he shouted to them to leave his property alone. Didn’t they understand that this was a setting hen, ready to hatch chickens! They must. .

These were the settler’s last words in life. Still chewing on the eggshells, one of the Indians lifted his gun, aimed, and fired. The shot hit Sven in the chest. He dropped the basket, fell face forward across a potato furrow and lay still among the broken stalks.

Sven Danjelsson died instantly.

From the cabin wall his father and brother had been calling to him about the plunder of the nest, and Ivar Eriksson had run toward the chicken coop, threatening the robbers. At that moment the first shot cracked, and Danjel Andreasson saw his oldest son drop to the ground.

Until then he had irresolutely watched the Indians’ doings; now he ran to the potato field, Danjel was hastening to his fallen son as fast as his stiff old legs could carry him.

He reached only halfway: The Indians at the coop aimed two shots at him; the first wounded him in the arm, the second hit him in the back and killed him.

Danjel Andreasson survived his son by only a few moments.

Ivar Eriksson was going after the egg thieves and intended to give them a good talking to, but when they started to use their guns he stopped and looked about; what must he do now? Within the span of the same minute he saw father and son fall from the Indians’ bullets and remain lying where they had fallen. What could he do? He was unarmed — all three Indians had guns. If he wished to save his life, there remained for him nothing but flight. But his children — they were inside the cabin.

He turned and rushed toward the house.

The Indians, however, had their eyes on him and fired several shots. Eriksson was hit in the shoulders and neck, and fell a few paces from the corner of the cabin. His wounds bled copiously but he remained conscious.

While this took place outside, three of the Sioux were inside the cabin of the young couple. They walked into the kitchen before any shots had been fired outside, and the young wife, busy at her dishes, had no suspicion of treachery. Ragnhild recoiled a little at the vile smell of their dirty bodies but she was not afraid of them. They asked for some milk. Many times before Indians had asked for milk, it was a drink new to them and they liked it.

The wife went to the cupboard for her earthen crock where she kept the morning milk. The uninvited guests drank in turn from the crock and soon emptied it. She hoped they would leave when they had quenched their thirst.

Just as they handed her the empty crock, the first shot was heard from outside. The young woman cried out in fright and rushed to the window; she had heard the shot that robbed her husband of his life out in the field. As Ragnhild peered through the window, the Indian who had first drunk of her milk lifted his tomahawk and struck her in the head from behind. She sank down to the kitchen floor, lifeless.

Ragnhild Danjelsson followed her husband in death as quickly as Danjel Andreasson had followed his son.

The Indians threw the empty milk crock to the floor, scattering the pieces against the walls. Then they pulled out their scalping knives and cut open the body of the pregnant woman; they pulled the child from her womb and hung it on the fireplace hook.

They were looking for edible things in the cabin. In the next room they came across the Eriksson children, the four-year-old boy and the three-year-old girl, who were playing on the floor. They grabbed the children by the legs and flung them against the wall, crushing their skulls. With their knives they deftly cut the bodies into many pieces.

They stayed in the log house and ate all the food they could lay hands on.

Meanwhile, the three Indians outside had scalped their white victims. But one of them was still alive: Ivar Eriksson, who had fallen near the house, was still conscious. A bullet had entered his neck and come out through his throat. He tried to stop the profuse bleeding by pulling up grass and pushing it into the bullet hole. As the Indians came by and noticed their victim was still alive, they cut his throat from ear to ear.

Ivar Eriksson had used snuff ardently and when his body later was found it was revealed that the Indians had allowed themselves a joke with the snuffbox they had found in his pocket. His thumb and right index finger, which he used while taking snuff, had been cut off and put in the snuffbox. The savages knew that the finger, the thumb, the snuff, and the box belonged together, and they wanted to gather all the pieces in one place.

The Indians had now fulfilled their mission to the Sven Danjelsson cabin: Here were no more whites alive. They set off for the next white homestead.

But it so happened that one life had escaped them. Olof, Danjel’s younger son, had seen his brother and father hit by Indian bullets and fall. He had realized they were dead and had run for his life toward the forest. He was a good runner and managed to hide behind trees before the Indians were aware of it.

But he was afraid the savages would find him in the forest, where he knew of no sure hiding place. Unnoticed he made his way down to the little lake; he waded out into the water until he was in up to his neck. Here he meant to hide. He covered his head with the broad leaves of water lilies that floated on the surface. If he could keep this position, his head hidden by the leaves, no Indian eyes from shore would spy him, however sharp they were. The question was: Could he endure remaining in this place? His mouth was just above the surface, permitting him easy breathing, and the thick leaves protected him against the burning sun, but the water was slimy with silt, hungry mosquitoes swarmed about his head, and leeches crept and crawled onto his body. And his legs felt weaker as they sank into the mire.

But Olof Danjelsson endured, and remained in his hiding place throughout the rest of the day, this whole, long Sunday afternoon. As soon as it grew dark he crept out of the water. He dared not go to his brothers cabin — the Indians might have remained there after the attack. Following unfamiliar paths through the woods he managed to get away from Acton.

After a half night of wandering in the dark he reached a shanty beside Norway Lake, where a Norwegian trapper lived. The shanty’s owner was horrified when he saw the youth come through his door; mud and slime on his face and clothing had dried in cakes until he looked like a black apparition. The trapper must be forgiven if he thought the devil in person was calling on him in his shanty this night.

That was how Danjels younger son saved his life.

But it was a long time before the sole survivor of the Indian attack was able to relate what he had experienced this Sunday and make known that the Sioux uprising had begun.

— 2—

From this Sunday, August 17, 1862, the young state of Minnesota had its own civil war.

A setting hens nest was robbed by hungry Indians — and the owner became the first victim. The great Sioux uprising was started by people who long had gone hungry, and hunger was its cause.

The Call to Alarm:

All through the gloom and the light

The fate of a thousand Minnesotans was

Riding that night.

(Freely after Longfellow)

— 1—

On the night of the eighteenth of August an Indian alarm was issued from Fort Ridgely. It was carried by a common soldier, William J. Sturgis, Company B, of the Fifth Minnesota Regiment.

On Monday, the eighteenth, Fort Ridgely had been completely surrounded by Indian warriors, but toward midnight Sturgis, aided by the intense darkness, managed to slip out from the fort with his horse. He rode eastward, down the Minnesota Valley. To the right he had the river to guide him. His way led through the most beautiful regions of Indian country; here stretched great lush leafy forests, here lay broad meadows, rich valleys — a region of fertility and growth. On recently broken clearings the crops stood yellow and ripe. The valley at this time of year flaunted its great abundance. Private William J. Sturgis rode through a good and fruitful land, wherein people of many nations had built for themselves new homes and found sure sustenance.

But he carried a message of death and fire, of cruelty and blood. The sky behind him was streaked with flames that lighted the sultry August night: Fires were rampant; flames rose from settlers’ houses, from immigrants’ homes.

William J. Sturgis was only nineteen years old and he had enlisted as a private only a few months earlier. Yesterday morning he had for the first time participated in the duty that primarily is the soldier’s: To take enemy life and defend your own. His company had been sent out from the fort against the rebelling Sioux — Chief Shakopee’s band had begun to murder, plunder, and burn down settlers’ houses near and far. At the bend of the river near Red Wood Ferry the forty-five soldiers had been caught unaware by Chief Shakopee. So sudden had been the surprise that he had seen his captain as well as many of his fellow soldiers fall, victims of Indian bullets. William was one of eight survivors of the group who had been able to return to the fort by fleeing along little-known forest roads.

In the evening he was ordered by his superior, Lieutenant Thomas P. Gere, to ride as courier to Governor Ramsey in St. Paul. The state’s highest official must be notified of yesterday’s happenings.

The Sioux had during the summer gathered in Meeker and Renville counties and were now on the warpath under their chief, Little Crow. On Monday they had attacked the Lower Sioux Agency at Red Wood. This attack had come without warning and the whites were wholly unprepared for it. The attack was successful in every way; by evening all the whites in Red Wood had been killed, all the houses burned down. The Agency was a smoking pile of embers.

After Chief Shakopee’s victory over Company B the Sioux warriors had surrounded the two forts on the Minnesota River — Fort Ridgely and New Ulm, the two defense posts for the Minnesota Valley. For Fort Ridgely’s defense there were now only twenty-nine soldiers under the command of Lieutenant Gere; the lieutenant was twenty-three years old. As commanding officer — after the captain had been killed — he now sent his courier to the governor with a report of the attack and with an urgent request for aid.

Relief immediately! Those were the most important words in the message young William was carrying to Minnesota’s capital.

Lieutenant Gere had supplied his courier with the fleetest horse available at the fort, and William pushed the animal to its utmost. For long stretches he galloped through the roadless country, along unfamiliar paths, often hindered and delayed by ravines, fallen giant trees, unexpected precipices. He was often forced to detour and urged his horse ever harder to regain the lost time. His ride with its perils seemed the ride of an insane man, but it was undertaken by a cool, courageous person, to save human lives.

Behind the rider the sky was fire-red; he rode to get help and to warn those who could help themselves — those who still might flee.

The settlers had been busy with harvesting, and they slept soundly in their beds, worn out from the work in the fields. They slept peacefully in their ignorance but were rudely wrested from the sweetness of sleep by thundering horse’s hoofs, a rider outside the house who banged against the door, calling with all the strength of his lungs: The Sioux are on the warpath! They are murdering all whites — men, women, and children! They’re burning houses, plundering, ravishing the whole country! They’re coming this way — hurry! Send women and children away! Hide if you can — in the woods, in cellars, in caves, in haystacks! Shakopee’s band is coming this way! Hurry! Hide from the Sioux!

Startled out of their sleep and still dazed, people stuck their heads out through the door, but the rider was already gone, on his way to another house. What was it he had called? Could they believe him? But it was not a dream — everyone in the house had heard the call: The Sioux are on the warpath!

Some believed the message, others did not. But as they looked toward the west and saw the sky yellow-red in flames, then they knew. Indeed, the rider had said: They’re burning everything.

Young William knew what he was doing, he knew whereof he spoke, knew the danger he warned against. But how many would have believed him if he had had the time to relate all he had seen and experienced in the regions where Chief Shakopee and his band had ravaged yesterday and the day before? Most would probably say: Such things could not happen! But none would ever see what he had seen, to none could he lend his eyes; the horror of it was still with him.

Shakopee and his band had left their camp at Lake Kandiyohi and spread out along the left shores of the river. This feared Sioux chieftain had gathered more scalps than any other of their chiefs, and yesterday William had encountered him, between Red Wood and Fort Ridgely, where he and his warriors swung their tomahawks in bloody battle.

William J. Sturgis was young, his mind was impressionable, he had seen something that again and again would return to his inner eye, until his eyes lost their light in death.

A settler is leaning backward against the picket fence enclosing his field. He might be resting thus after his harvest work. But he is nailed to the pickets by spears that have been stabbed through his groin. The grass at his feet is as red as roses in bloom. The man is screaming with all his might. His eye sockets are empty, the bloody globes lie in the gore on the ground. As William pulls out the spears the man suddenly becomes silent. He falls forward along his fence; he is dead.

Private Sturgis is fleeing to the fort and hides in the tall grass. He stumbles over a dead woman, her body cut open, her innards removed. Instead of intestines he sees parts of a cut-up child. A pregnant woman has had her child returned to her body, after death.

A dead boy about six or seven years old lies a few paces away from her. The little forehead is crushed, the nose cut off. The right hand still clutches a knife he must have used to defend himself.

Two settlers lie naked in their wheat field, their torn clothing some distance away. Both lie on their backs, their scythes beside them; they were surprised in their harvesting and lie now among sheaves they’ll never gather. Their heads are crushed to a pulp — Chief Shakopee’s warriors prefer to use their tomahawks and do not waste bullets unnecessarily. Each of the harvesters’ bodies had a red blotch in the crotch: Their male organs have been cut off and stuck in their mouths.

Outside a shanty sits an old man, his back leaning against the door; he looks comfortable, as if enjoying his afternoon siesta. But he cannot be awakened, he has been scalped, and both arms have been cut off and laid in a cross before the dead. He sits as if he were dreaming pleasant dreams beside his lost limbs.

Face down, across the threshold, lies a man’s naked body. On a hook above the door hang the man’s testicles.

The heat is intense, the smell of decaying flesh follows, pursues William; this odor will soon contaminate the air in all this region.

Crushed, shot, scalped, maimed — the entire way from Red Wood Ferry to Fort Ridgely he had seen only one living individual. From inside a hollow oak came a pitiful complaint as from a hurt animal. It was a child’s cry. He went over to the oak: A little girl crept out of a hole in the trunk. She whined, wept with dry eyes, hiccupped for breath, stammered, but could not reply to his questions. She seemed to have lost her power of speech through fear. He spoke reassuringly to her for a while, and then she began to tell her story.

Her father and mother had been in the field, she alone inside with her older sister. Then some strangers came, they had feathers in their hair, and their faces were painted red. Four of them. They had tied the hands of her sister, torn off her clothes, and laid her on her back on the floor. Then each man in turn had lain down on her stomach and laughed terribly. But her sister only cried and asked them to stop. She herself had at first hidden behind a bed but when one of the redskins looked at her, she had jumped out through the window and run through the bushes until she found the oak with the hole in it. She had stayed in this hiding place the whole night and hardly dared move, she was so afraid the Indians who had treated her sister so badly would find her.

In the whole region — from Red Wood to the fort — he had found only a single human being alive, a ten-year-old girl, saved in a hollow oak.

He took the girl with him to the fort, and when they were almost there they met a woman with wild eyes and flying hair who kept screaming: Where is the haystack? Where are my children? The woman seemed to have lost her mind, but by and by he managed to calm her and learned that she had hidden her children in a haystack when she heard the Indians were coming; one child was only six months old. She herself had hidden in a well and thus saved her life. But when she crawled up again she couldn’t find the haystack where she had hidden the children. There were so many haystacks and she had looked in every one without finding the little ones. She had forgotten to observe which stack she hid them in; she had been so excited, she had pushed them into the first one she saw.

Perhaps the Indians had found her children and killed them?

Where is the haystack? Where are my children?

Private William had left the mother without being able to help her. But her screams he would hear forever.

He had seen it all, with these very eyes which now tried to penetrate the darkness as he rode toward St. Paul. He felt those sights would be with him always, he could never shake them off, they proved to him man’s powerlessness when such forces were let loose.

Private William J. Sturgis rode through Minnesota and spread his alarm through its settlements, shouted to the mothers: Hide your children! Hide them in haystacks and hollow trees!

He knew the danger he was warning them against.

— 2—

At three o’clock in the morning Sturgis reached St. Peter, where he changed horses. And twelve hours later, at three o’clock on Tuesday afternoon, he rode into Fort Snelling, where he at once delivered his message to Governor Alexander Ramsey.

Through a country primarily without roads, the courier from Fort Ridgely had covered a distance of 120 miles in fifteen hours. He had made the fastest ride known to anyone in Minnesota.

Private William J. Sturgis, one of the eight survivors of the Red Wood Ferry massacre, was himself granted a long life. Fate allowed him to see a new century — he died in 1907, on his farm near the Rocky Mountains. During the many years after it happened, he had had the opportunity to tell his neighbors, over and over again, about his fast ride from beleaguered Fort Ridgely to St. Paul on August 19, 1862. It was his life’s great accomplishment: He had warned the people about the Sioux uprising and in so doing saved thousands of lives.

Because of his ride Private Sturgis has found a place in the history of Minnesota.

The Panic:

— 1—

Above the shores of Lake Chisago the sandstone Indian head rose like a guardtower over the St. Croix Valley. A wreath of greenish bushes decorated the Indian head this summer as in other summers. His broad stone forehead was turned toward the east, and from his elevated position his black cave eyes surveyed the land the white intruders had taken from his kinfolk. The stone Indian at Lake Ki-Chi-Saga had watched as the whites came in endless droves to build their houses on his people’s hunting grounds, he watched them open roads through his forefathers’ graves, watched them change the beautiful, good land between the rivers. The intruders had spread, until those born in these regions had to withdraw. All around the great water where he had seen hundreds of campfires, lit by his people, the stone Indian could now see only a lamplight here and there.

The proud, free hunter people were being degraded to beggars. “As the white man comes the Indian must go.”

The settlers around Lake Chisago were aware of this sandstone cliff, the Indian head, and to them it was a monument to the natives’ savagery and unfetteredness. They saw before them a constant reminder of the people who before them had possessed this valley. Now they had become masters of this land, but back there the Indian still stretched his defiant neck against the sky and threw his dark shadow over the lake’s water. The stone Indian seemed to them an ever remaining threat. There he stood and there he would remain. The high sand cliff was a fortress no one could conquer. It would never fall. The redskins could be conquered, obliterated, but this cliff could not be moved or obliterated: The Indians could be banished — but not The Indian!

The stone Indian would remain long after those now living — the final victor.

— 2—

When news of the great Sioux rising to the west reached the St. Croix Valley, panic spread among the people.

Ever since their arrival the immigrants had feared the country’s old inhabitants. To the settlers the Indians were a wild, savage people, and they looked upon them as treacherous, unreliable, and cruel. Yet the Chippewa of the St. Croix Valley had been peaceful, and hardly anything could be remembered that indicated cruelty and bloodthirstiness in the redskins. But as long as the Indians remained they would be a constant cause of apprehension among the whites; their camps in the vicinity of white settlements were always felt as a danger: No one knew what they might have in mind or when they might attack. Time and time again rumors of uprising spread: The Indians were on the warpath! Each time fright seized the settlers. Through repeated false alarms the Indian fear was sustained over the years.

During those few days in August the Indian scare spread rapidly across the St. Croix Valley. All the old fear that had accumulated in their minds rose to the surface; they remembered all the old stories of Indian cruelty in war, the way of all savages, merciless, relentless warfare. They killed everyone, regardless of sex or age, they spared not even the unborn children in the mothers’ wombs. They treated human beings in the same way they treated fallen prey during a hunt — as carcasses to slaughter.

Under the settlers’ fear lay a feeling of guilt, more or less conscious; they felt there was an unsettled matter between them and the country’s former owners: The Indians wanted to rid themselves of the whites. This they must count on and fear: One day the redskins would try to exact their revenge on them, and exact it in blood.

That day had come.

Indian panic spread through the St. Croix Valley. The people were drawn from their daily chores by a new urgent concern: their own lives. They knew they were all intended as slaughter-prey for Little Crow and Chief Shakopee’s warriors.

The Sioux war cry, which was aimed at every white inhabitant of Minnesota, echoed over the valley in those days. People feared to repeat five words which were soon known to everyone — the flaming red letters in the sky, as it were:

Every white man must die!

And during these days of panic something strange happened: The tall cliff at Chisago Lake grew in height. The formation assumed greater proportions and threw its shadow ever wider. The stone Indian straightened his rebellious and proud neck and held his green-wreathed head higher in the sky. The unusually brilliant sun gave to the forehead a red glow which no one had seen before.

And people turned to the cliff and said: Look! The Indian is coming to life! He has war paint on his face! Look!

The Indian at Lake Chisago waited in stony immobility. From the west they would come, there behind his mighty back, there they were in motion; his kinfolk were approaching.

The hunter people had arisen to drive out the intruders and take back their own land.

XIII. EVERY WHITE MAN MUST DIE!

— 1—

On the afternoon of Wednesday, August 20, Karl Oskar Nilsson was busy shocking wheat on his last clearing. With an iron bar he made a hole in the ground, pushed a pole into it, and leaned eight sheaves against the pole; then he hung four more crossways on the pole as a “hat.” Each hat-sheaf he bent against his knee before he hung it so that heads and roots of the four top sheaves pointed downward and made a protecting roof in case of rainy weather. The wheat was tall enough to make stately shocks in straight rows, like a long line of soldiers in the field.

In the past wheat had been cheap, as low as forty cents a bushel, but during the war it had constantly risen in price until it now brought a whole dollar a bushel. That was why he had planted three quarters of his field with this grain last spring. And all his wheat had now ripened at one time and must be cut and harvested as soon as possible while the favorable weather lasted. This year they had a great harvest rush at his farm.

But today, as Karl Oskar raised shock after shock, his thoughts were not with the labor of his hands; instead they were inside the house where his wife was lying in bed.

Kristina had taken sick last night. She had been seized with pain in her lower abdomen, and a flow of blood. These were the signs of a miscarriage, and he had sent Johan with the team to Stillwater to fetch Dr. Farnley. If for some reason the doctor was unable to come with him, Johan was to fetch Miss Skalrud, the Norwegian midwife.

In the morning Manda Svensson had come to see Kristina and she had confirmed their suspicion; it was a miscarriage. It happened at the beginning of the fourth month.

Now Marta was at home and looked after her mother, who had a high fever with spells of dizziness and great fatigue. Marta would call her father if he were needed.

Karl Oskar put up one shock-post after another but worked as if he neither heard nor saw anything. He counted the sheaves wrong, he put seven around the pole and five on the hat, one too many on top and one too few at the bottom. At one point he put thirteen sheaves in one shock. It had never happened to him before that he couldn’t count to twelve at shocking time.

Kristina was in bed.

Johan could not be back from Stillwater with Dr. Farnley or Miss Skalrud before evening at the earliest, even if he drove the team at bolting speed. Karl Oskar had urged him to drive as fast as the wagon and harnesses would permit. But even if nothing delayed him, the entire day would be required for the round trip.

Meanwhile, Karl Oskar would shock the wheat they had cut so far. He would work as long as daylight permitted him, as long as his eyes could distinguish between the top and bottom of the sheaves.

The tillers hands picked up the sheaves by the straw bands, one after the other. But today he did not notice how full were the heads, how heavy; nor did it gladden his heart. He was not conscious of what he was handling. Eight sheaves against the post, four to the hat — he was not capable of this simple counting. Instead he was counting a few words, and they were old words: A half year ago he had heard them for the first time, that threatening reminder.

Next. . Next time. . Even if he looked about while working he was not aware of what happened around him.

He had not seen the man down on the road who now came running rapidly across his field. He had not heard the heavy, noisy boot-steps behind him.

“Nilsson!”

Only when his name was called did Karl Oskar turn around.

It was Petrus Olausson. He was no daily caller at this farm. Their neighbor had not come to see them for several years, because they had refused to close their door to the wife of Baptist minister Jackson.

But today he must have an urgent errand, since he came in such a rush. He was a heavy man, yet he was running; he was bareheaded, and he had no time for a greeting. He puffed and sputtered as he blurted out:

“The Indians! They’re coming!”

Olausson had stopped a few paces from Karl Oskar, panting for breath. His face was shiny with perspiration, he dried his forehead with both his hands. You could both see and hear that he had been running a long distance.

The words stuck in his throat:

“A horrible Indian outbreak! They’re murdering the settlers. .!”

At first Karl Oskar was more aware of his neighbor’s behavior than of his words. He knew the church warden as a calm and placid man. Never before had he seen this easygoing farmer run. But here was his neighbor, agitated, distraught, running like one pursued.

“They’ve warned us from Fort Snelling. .! The redskins are after blood. .! They’re killing every settler they get near. .!”

Olausson caught his breath and began to speak more coherently. When he was in Center City this morning, a man rode in from Fort Snelling with the Indian alarm; the Sioux to the west were on the warpath along the Minnesota River and had attacked all the settlements in their path. They had murdered every white and burned down every house. Fort Ridgely and New Ulm, which protected the Minnesota Valley, were surrounded by the red savages. People were fleeing toward St. Peter and Mankato, leaving behind a blood-red sky from burning settlements.

The commander at Fort Snelling had sent couriers in all directions to warn the settlers about the Indian danger.

“I’ve run from house to house. .!”

Petrus Olausson’s shiny, hairless head glittered as wet and red as his face. His eyes were wild, his mouth trembled, his voice was now low and thick, now loud and piping.

Karl Oskar understood that this time it was no false alarm. When the Fort Snelling commandant himself had sent riding messengers to the settlers the information must be correct.

He mumbled: “Indian trouble on top of everything. .?”

The red murderers had used the right moment, said Petrus Olausson. These treacherous savages waited till the whites were busy with their own war. Five thousand Minnesotans were gone, and the redskins must have figured that with all ablebodied men away there were now only children and old men left behind on the farms.

“We are not entirely without manpower,” observed Karl Oskar.

“But the redskins don’t fight like humans! They’re pure beasts!”

Karl Oskar stood weighing the iron bar in his hand, looking at his neighbor who had brought him the message. Olausson’s feet tramped about in the stubble, his frightened eyes flew in all directions, and he could not say a single word calmly or clearly.

Karl Oskar saw before him a man who feared for his life.

Petrus Olausson had been proven right and now he wanted to remind you of it. He had always said they should drive the heathen pack away from Minnesota, for the Indians had always been and remained beasts whom no one could convert. The Lutherans had sent many missionaries among them, and they had collected money for catechisms to distribute among them so that they might at least learn God’s commandments. He himself had collected money for the books, sent whole wagon loads of Luther’s catechism in strong leather bindings to them. To what use? How had it helped? Now people could see for themselves; the red bandits thanked their givers by murdering them! The whites had offered the redskins Christ’s gospel; the redskins had answered their benefactors with tomahawks! They replied by crushing the skulls of the noble Christians who wanted to save them from heathen darkness!

When the whites had moved into the Indian country they had only followed the one path indicated by God! It was his wish that different people should succeed each other on the face of the earth. The Indians — like once the Canaanites — were under God’s doom. It was the Almighty’s will that these heathens should be obliterated from the earth, and a Christian no longer need feel sorry for them. President Lincoln was entirely too kind and compassionate with this beastly pack in allowing them to remain within the borders of the United States. There was only one way in which to treat the savages — get them out of Minnesota! This had always been Olausson’s opinion, and now everyone could see that he had been right!

Leaning on his iron bar, Karl Oskar Nilsson listened to his neighbor’s rancorous outburst against the Indians. He had indeed heard before that the redskins did not conduct their wars in a Christian or Lutheran manner but stuck to their Indian and heathen ways. In war they did not follow any rules, they only killed. And the savages acted as savages always had, he thought.

He wanted to know how close the Sioux were: “They haven’t got to St. Peter and Mankato yet, did you say?”

“They might be here any moment! We don’t have any soldiers left to stop those bandits!”

“What about the settlers? Can’t we do anything?”

“We live too far apart. No time to get together.”

“What’s your idea — to run away?”

“Of course! Flee as fast as you can, Nilsson!”

“Take off to the wilds, you mean. .?”

“Yes! And let your cattle loose in the forest!”

Karl Oskar turned his head slowly and looked out over his fields with the still uncut, ripe wheat: “You mean leave. .?” Then he looked toward the house: “Leave. . everything. .?”

“It’s the only thing we can do!” And Petrus Olausson held both his hands over his red, bald head, as if defending himself against the sharp scalping knives: “We must leave at once and hide from the Sioux murderers!”

Karl Oskar was a little surprised at this great fear that had come over their pious parish warden: “Don’t you have any trust in God’s help, Olausson. .?”

“The Lord helps only those who help themselves!”

“No one else. .?”

“No! Not a one! Remember that!”

“Well, that’s what I’ve always thought. It depends on oneself. .”

“We must warn all the settlers hereabouts. . I’ll see to it that we ring the church bell!”

“So we must leave our homes and run. .?”

Karl Oskar looked again toward the house up there in the shade under the tall sugar maples. At the east gable he could see the Astrakhan tree, its limbs bent by the heavy fruit. The apples glittered in the sun. This year the Sweden-tree bore for the first time.

“It isn’t so easy for me to leave. .” Karl Oskar took a deep breath and added: “Kristina is in bed.”

In the last words he had explained his plight to his neighbor. What he had said ought to be sufficient.

But it seemed Olausson hadn’t heard. His ears were closed to everything except the Indian scare: “I’m in a hurry! I must be off and tell the other neighbors! And get the church bell going.”

And he was gone on the moment. He vanished along the path that led to Algot Svensson’s.

Karl Oskar remained standing beside a shock he had not yet completed — the hat-sheaves were still lacking. He leaned against the iron bar and tramped on the wheatheads without noticing. Desert his home? Run away and leave all they owned?

For twelve years they had lived here. They were citizens, they had paid for their land and had the papers to prove it. They had tilled fields that gave good crops, they had built houses — a home. After twelve years of hard work they were getting along well and had enough for all their needs. Everything was in order. Here on the shores of Chisago Lake the immigrants had founded their own little community where they lived in peace and comfort. It had been a long time since he carried his gun with him while working in field or forest. They had never been bothered by the redskins.

Karl Oskar Nilsson had never believed anything other than that he would remain undisturbed on his farm for the rest of his life.

Here he had only used the tools of peaceful work. He had carried his ax for cutting and clearing; he had timbered up a home for himself and his own. Back there stood the house, serene and farmer-secure, with its new-painted walls and splendid shake roof. How many days’ labor hadn’t he put into it? How many trees hadn’t he felled for the walls? How many rafters and scantlings hadn’t he dressed? In great concern he had chinked his house, put on the roof, hewed the floorboards, built the fireplaces, finished the rooms. Twelve years of labor all this had cost him.

It was his home in this world. He had built it with his own hands and paid for it with his sweat. This farm was his by the tiller’s right.

And would all he had built up suddenly be destroyed, all he had done be undone? His home no longer his, not theirs who lived here? Their home in ruins, surrendered to savages and fire? They themselves fleeing to the wilderness, without a roof or a place to live?

To flee from their home: From one day to the next they would change from secure property owners to paupers, from settled homesteaders to vagabonds. After twelve years they would be thrust back to their situation on arrival. After twelve years they would change into impoverished immigrants, walking on foot through the wilderness from Stillwater to Taylors Falls, each night making their beds on leaves and twigs under the bare sky. Again they would be poor people who carried all they owned with them, all their possessions in their arms. From one day to the next they would lose fields and cattle, house and home.

So insecure and unsure was the pioneer’s right to the soil, so little rooted was he in his new state of Minnesota, so loose his settling in North America — so hazardous was the settler’s life.

— 2—

Karl Oskar slowly opened the door to the big room and walked on tiptoe across the floor; perhaps she was asleep? Marta had said that Mother dozed for moments but was awake most of the time. She often asked for water, and had also asked what time of day it was.

Kristina lay motionless on her back, her eyes open. The color of her face had changed; now her cheeks were light red and her eyes had the warm glitter of fever.

“Johan should be here with the doctor soon. .”

“Don’t worry, Karl Oskar. I’ll get well.”

Her voice was clear. She asked for water, her fever-thirst could not be quenched. He picked up the pitcher on the table beside her bed and filled it from the pail in the kitchen. He held his wife’s head in one hand as he lifted the water glass to her mouth. The sick one drank in long swallows.

She had not taken any food today as yet, and he asked if she would like anything to eat. No, she felt as full as if she had come from a feast. And her lips formed a smile as she said it.

His face was rigid with suppressed anxiety.

“I’ve had a new lost journey. Too bad. I was sure I would be allowed to keep it this time.”

Kristina had for a second time borne death.

“Don’t think about that. As long as you get well again. .”

“I’ll get well again. I know.”

She wanted to say something more between two short breaths but she was interrupted by a sound from outside. A bell was chiming. The gable window stood open; today the wind was favorable and carried the sound of the little church bell strong and clear.

Kristina lifted her head from the pillow and listened. “Is that the church bell? In the middle of the week?”

“It sounds like it.”

“Why?”

“I wonder.”

Olausson had said they would ring the bell, to warn the settlers.

Karl Oskar said, “Perhaps they’re ringing for someone. . someone who is. .” One word was missing in that sentence, but he could not let it across his lips.

The ringing of the bell from the settlers’ wood church went on. It was a holiday sound and it was disturbing because it was heard on a weekday.

“Don’t worry,” said Kristina. “Remember what I told you.”

“I remember. I know.”

But what did he know? What could he be sure of?

God ruled their lives and everything on earth. But Karl Oskar was not sure a person could trust God. He could not believe as his wife did. Kristina had given herself into the Lord’s hands. Was she right in doing so?

They would now be finding out. Soon they would know: Was God to be trusted?

— 3—

Just as twilight began to fall Johan returned from Stillwater. And Karl Oskar choked as he looked at the wagon; the boy was alone. He must have driven at bolting speed. The team was in a cloud of perspiration. The driver had not spared the animals. Johan jumped off the wagon and explained that Dr. Farnley had not been at home. A sign on the door announced that he had gone to Wisconsin for an indefinite stay. An old man next door had said that Farnley had taken off because there was an alarm about the Indians. Many frightened people in Stillwater had today crossed the St. Croix into Wisconsin. Miss Skalrud too was not at home. Johan had gone to Pastor Jackson’s house to ask about her, but no one there knew where she was. Perhaps she had run away with the others. He had talked to a servant girl who said that Mr. and Mrs. Jackson were in Chicago for a Baptist congress.

Then Johan had gone to the other doctor, Cristoffer Caldwell, the one who called himself Physician and Housebuilder, Carpenter & Blacksmith, according to the sign on his door. But Caldwell was as plump as a fatted pig and could hardly walk. He had said he wasn’t well himself and was not able to go on long journeys to sick people in the wilderness. But if Johan would tell him what ailed the sick one he would send medicine. And Johan had explained about his mother as best he could. Dr. Caldwell had mixed a bottle of medicine which cost four dollars. He said himself it was rather expensive but it always healed the sick. With this medicine he had got many settler wives on their feet after miscarriages and childbed fever. He assured Johan it would help Mrs. Nilsson. And the doctor was drinking from a whiskey bottle all the time he mixed the medicine! Perhaps he used whiskey for his own ailment?

All Johan had brought with him from Stillwater was a fat-bellied flask which contained a brown-yellow syrupy fluid. That flask was now the only help they had but Johan explained that the doctor had said it was a sure remedy against childbed fever.

Karl Oskar poured a tablespoon of Dr. Caldwell’s medicine for his wife. It was strong; one could smell it a long way off. It looked like syrup as it flowed into the spoon. He coaxed the sick one to swallow all of it.

“What a nasty taste,” she said with a grimace. For a moment it seemed as if she would throw up the medicine.

“It chokes me!”

“Try to keep it down, dear!”

He gave her a lump of sugar to take away the nasty taste.

He had a lot of trouble because of her, she said. But she didn’t feel any pain any more; she was only tired and wanted to sleep. She would like so to get her fill of sleep for once.

— 4—

Marta had done the milking and prepared the supper, and Karl Oskar sat down to table with his six children, four sons and two daughters. Each one had his given place at the table. The father had the oldest son on his right and the oldest daughter on his left. The two smallest, Frank and Ulrika, still ate standing up.

Johan and Marta, the two oldest, understood and knew what had happened to Mother. They also remembered it had happened once before. Johan was tensely serious and silent, while Marta had cried several times today. But none of the children could understand what was the matter with Father. Since early in the morning he had hardly spoken to any one of them and did not reply when spoken to. At table he ate only a couple of slices of bread and drank a little milk. When he rose from supper he told the children to be quiet when they moved around the house so they wouldn’t waken Mother in case she slept.

Frank and Ulrika had recently begun the fall term in the Center City school and after supper they read their lessons, competing with each other in their reading. Frank had a piece containing one- and two-syllable words to memorize and Ulrika a piece with several longer words.

Frank read his piece carelessly and with great speed.

“Lords without virtue are like lanterns without light. A wound never heals well enough to hide the scar. Poor and rich are alike to death. If you want the kernel you must crush the nut. Better bow than hit your head on the door lintel. Mistakes of others make no law. Trust in God makes the nation safe. Better a good death than an evil life.”

The boy babbled on so loudly that the father had to admonish him; he went outside and sat on the stoop to read.

But Ulrika obeyed her father and read slowly and in a low voice. She was two years older than her brother and had been given a little more difficult lesson.

“For all the good my parents have given me I have not been able to give them any good in return. Nor have they done this to reap payment for their concern. They ask nothing from me except that I be a good child. This is their greatest joy and reward. I will love them with all my heart; I will constantly show them my gratitude. May I never sadden them with recalcitrance and disobedience. When they grow old I will take care of them in their old age.”

The monotonous voices of the children reading their lessons was the only sound heard in the house.

The children went to bed, but Karl Oskar did not undress this evening; he would stay up. He sat down beside Kristina’s bed where she lay in a deep fever-doze. As soon as she woke up she asked for water, and he also gave her the brown-yellow medicine, forcing the spoon between her lips. She swallowed only reluctantly. Later in the night she grew delirious and talked of high billows she was afraid of, as if she were on a ship sailing across the ocean.

The bell-ringing in the church tower continued intermittently until late at night. Kristina no longer heard it and had stopped asking what it meant. And Karl Oskar himself listened to the sound without realizing that it was an alarm bell. For long periods he forgot what the ringing meant. Everything he had heard today about approaching, bloodthirsty Indian hordes was suppressed in his mind by what was happening in his own house. What was going on in this room occupied him and ruled him.

Here he watched over Kristina.

— 5—

It was Wednesday, August 20.

On the evening of this day Chief Shakopee and his warriors danced a war dance around their campfires on the shore of Lake Kandiyohi. Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday — for four days the Sioux war had gone on, for four days the redskins had had uninterrupted success, and they were celebrating the victories of these four days. The shouts of jubilation from Shakopee’s warriors echoed over the water, and the flames from the victory fires lit up the August night.

But neither the tall flames nor the loud shouts nor the great commotion could frighten any white person in the vicinity where the Indians had ravaged the settlers’ homes; no sound, no noise is strong enough to frighten the dead.

During the victory celebration at Lake Kandiyohi, Chief Shakopee made a statement that was widely spread, a Sioux warrior’s proud assertion: Shakopee was asked why he moved his right arm so clumsily and stiffly while dancing.

He replied that today his tomahawk had crushed so many white skulls that his right arm felt lame.

While Karl Oskar Nilsson shocked wheat on his field this Wednesday, four hundred other tillers in Minnesota had paid for their land with their lives. That was the price for the land the previous owners meted out to each white man.

XIV. WHILE KARL OSKAR KEPT NIGHT WATCH

— 1—

Twelve sheaves to a shock — eight around the post and four for the hat — eight and four, shock after shock. His hands obeyed and picked up the sheaves and put them in place and bent them for the hat. But the wheat field was broad and the sheaves lay close and the heat sucked the strength from his limbs. It was the hottest August they had experienced out here.

Karl Oskar started with the shocking at six o’clock to take advantage of the morning coolness. But already after one hour the sun was burning so intensely that perspiration ran over his brows and smarted like salt in his eyes. Regularly he made a visit to the water crock which he had put in the shade of a linden at the edge of the field.

The church bell began to ring again on Thursday morning. In clear weather the little church spire was visible from this slope. Calm as it was now, the sound came clear.

Two men emerged from the forest carrying guns and rucksacks. Karl Oskar recognized them as his neighbors, Jonas Petter and Algot Svensson.

They cut across the field and approached him. He need not ask the men their errand or why they were out so early.

Jonas Petter said, “The settlers have been called — we must all go and fight the Indians.”

Jonas Petter had put on some weight these last years and walked rather heavily. “I never thought I’d have to go out to war at sixty years of age!”

Algot Svensson said, “I’d hoped I would never have to go. .”

A red flame glowed in Algot’s left eye, which had been torn to pieces by a branch when he was clearing his claim. “But it can’t be helped,” he said. “A one-eyed man might do some good.”

“It’ll help you aim!” said Jonas Petter. “Now you won’t have to close that eye!”

“How near are they?” asked Karl Oskar.

“No one seems to know for sure,” said Jonas Petter, and shouldered his gun.

He went on: Last night the sheriff had called a meeting in Center City, and he and Algot had been there. During the meeting two men had arrived who had walked all the way from Carver County. They said all the settlers in Carver had fled to the forest, leaving cattle and everything behind. People in Hennepin and Nicollet had fled to St. Paul and Fort Snelling. The men had also said that great hordes of fugitives from out west were heading in this direction. Thousands had gathered in St. Peter and Mankato, completely destitute. They camped in the streets and slaughtered oxen or whatever animals they could lay hands on. All roads from the Minnesota Valley were crowded with wagons and cattle.

They had been told at the meeting that Governor Ramsey had sent Colonel Sibley, the ex-governor, against the Indians, leading the soldiers from Fort Snelling. But unfortunately the good soldiers were already in the South, fighting in the Civil War, and only four companies of new volunteers had been available at Fort Snelling. Of these a few hundred men had been sent to relieve Fort Ridgely and New Ulm, which were surrounded by the Sioux. There was a rumor that Little Crow had gathered several thousand redskins and that all of them had guns. If the forts fell, the road would be open to St. Paul, but Colonel Sibley was organizing the defense for all of Minnesota and if he had time he would stop them.

At the meeting last night the Chisago settlers had decided to evacuate the women and children and organize all the men. Across from Nordberg’s Island, at the narrow passage between the shore and cliffs just west of the church, they would gather and build a defense wall. The sheriff would get ammunition and guns from the governor, he thought. The men were to meet at the pass and start digging in the morning.

“I can’t go with you,” said Karl Oskar. “Kristina is sick in bed — she had another miscarriage. .”

Algot asked how she was getting along and Karl Oskar said there was no change since yesterday.

“Well, of course you can’t leave her,” said Jonas Petter. He had shared many dangers with his fellow emigrant from Ljuder and knew Karl Oskar was not trying to get out of defending his family and home. With his wife seriously ill he had just cause.

“You’ve never shit in your pants from fear, Karl Oskar. But Olausson has already run away with his wife and children. They took off to some island.”

“He shouldn’t have rushed about and scared people the way he did. People'll lose their sense in fright,” said Karl Oskar.

“Who doesn’t love his own family!” said Algot.

“The redskins are awfully cruel,” said Jonas Petter. “I want to kill at least one before they cut me up like a pig.”

Jonas Petter was going to the Norwegian gunsmith in Center City to have the mechanism of his old Swedish muzzle loader fixed. It was still a good gun; he could fell a deer seventy paces away, and an Indian couldn’t have a thicker hide than a buck.

“I wonder what Colonel Sibley is up to,” said Algot.

“If anyone can stop the redskins he can,” said Karl Oskar.

Colonel Henry Sibley had lived among the Sioux for long periods as a government agent. During that time he must have learned some of their tricks, he ought to know their kind of warfare. At the first gubernatorial election his opponents had claimed that Sibley had fathered a number of children with squaws, but the Republicans had never proved this. Nor would it detract from his military qualifications if true.

“Well, then he’ll fight his own brats,” said Jonas Petter. He took out his snuffbox and loaded his nose, puffed and dried from the perspiration. A hell of a heat! he thought. It melted the lead in his fly buttons so he couldn’t keep his horn in.

“If you stay here you must at least get your children to a safe place,” said Algot.

“You think it’s that bad?”

Yes, continued Algot Svensson, he and his neighbor, Johan Kron, were sending their wives and children to Cedar Island. Of all the many islands in the lake this one offered the best protection. Cedar Island was covered with impenetrable thickets and heavy woods, and gunshots couldn’t reach it from either shore. Karl Oskar’s children could join the group when they rowed them over.

Jonas Petter added that he had heard last night that Colonel Sibley, who lived in Mendota, had already on Tuesday sent his family to Fort Snelling. This more than anything else had frightened people in St. Paul.

Now Karl Oskar grew concerned; the former governor did not consider his family safe in Mendota! The officer in charge must know what he was doing.

He made a quick decision: “Yes, the children must get away! You take them with yours, Algot!”

As the men were leaving, Karl Oskar remembered that Danjel Andreasson had gone to see his son in Acton to help him with the harvest. He called after his neighbors: “Are they back at Danjel’s?”

“No, they’re with Sven in Meeker.”

“They must be in the midst of it!”

Jonas Petter stopped still; it struck him that Danjel and his sons and daughter-in-law were indeed in Meeker County, the very place where the Indians had started the uprising.

“You’re right, Karl Oskar. I wonder how they’ll manage. .”

Jonas Petter’s face had stiffened. Slowly he folded his hands: “O Lord God! O Lord, save Danjel and his. .”

Jonas Petter was not a pious man; he seldom prayed. But now he was standing with folded hands. And it was not for himself that he called on the Lord God. He prayed a warm, fervent prayer for some people who had been his neighbors, people whom he had been close to for many years, people he wanted to see live, whom he wanted to be with again.

— 2—

Music from a black organ:

But today was Thursday, August 21, and the people Jonas Petter prayed for were no longer to be found among the living. They were on one of the hundreds of farms where already all life was extinguished.

This Thursday had been preceded by a Sunday. During their dinner rest on the Sabbath they had been caught unaware. While resting in the shade behind the cabin their minutes ran out and they entered another rest which no one could disturb.

Four days had now gone by, and Danjel Andreasson and his eldest son remained in a field, undisturbed in their new rest. It would be another two days before the soldiers found their bodies.

Only a few paces separated the bodies of father and son. The father was running these paces when he fell. He had seen his son fall and was hurrying to his aid. Thus his life was crowned by his death. The God Danjel confessed sacrificed his only son for humanity’s salvation. Danjel sacrificed himself, his own life, for his eldest son.

But he was an earthly being, he was made of earth, he belonged to the soil of the field that was now his bed. His body was rotting on the ground near his son with whom he had shared the moment of death. Under the hot sun baking the field, their bodies soon were transformed and returned to their home in the earth.

Coming from far away they had sought a new home in a new country, and here they had found their permanent home: They had returned to man’s sure and everlasting abode.

Their resting place in the field, from early morning till late night, was marked by a thick swarm of big, black, fat flies. An uncountable number of these winged creatures held a wake over the dead settlers. A black cloud of the air’s buzzing life hovered over their corpses. The flies kept the wake faithfully, untiringly. They gathered and formed their dark cloud around the bier as soon as the sun began to shine over the field in the morning, and they did not part when twilight fell in the evening. During the night the swarm disappeared, it was invisible to the eye, but its sound told of its presence.

Uninterrupted, through day and night, the buzzing, whirring sound of the flies continued. From the black swarm over the field it rose like the surging peal of an organ; a monotonous playing as from eternity’s depth, it strained on through day and night. A buzzing, whirring psalm was sung over the unburied corpses. From the swarm of small, whirring lives organ music was played over humans who had returned to the dust.

Play, black organ, play over this field, and over the other hundreds where the tiller has come home. Play over these dead, sing the whirring psalm for those who here enjoy rest in the earth! Play and whir through day and night, strike up a hymn for a funeral aboveground for these tillers who here have settled for eternity!

On a hundred settlements all life had ceased; this black cloud was the wakers’ organ.

And the black organ hummed, it whirred, it buzzed its psalm over Danjel Andreasson and his son, and for all those who had fallen back upon the earth that owned their bodies.

On this day the black organ played at seven hundred funerals in the settlers’ country. It would play at other places, still waiting.

— 3—

On one of the oldest farms only the husband and wife were left behind. Their children had been evacuated with their neighbors, who had left their homes and sought safety.

The wife lay sick and the husband sat beside her bed. He watched over her through day and night. While she slept he had sent away the children and he worried lest she should ask for them when she woke up. But only once did she wonder why she didn’t see them or hear their voices. He told her the boys were busy with the harvest and the girls were picking berries in the forest. The wife did not seem to suspect the husband was lying to her.

The sick one was not able to take any food, but as she suffered from fever-thirst she drank a great deal of water. From a bottle on the table beside the bed, the husband poured a yellow-brown, syrupy fluid into a spoon and gave it to the wife, who swallowed reluctantly.

On this farm quiet and inactivity reigned. No chores were performed; neither inside nor outside was there any sound of activity. No children ran about and played and laughed. The cattle had been let out into the forest, and in the evening the cows came to the gate and waited for their milkmaid. But she did not come to meet them with her pail and stool, she did not sit down to lean her head against their sides. In her place a man attempted to relieve their swollen udders with his rough, clumsy fingers which squeezed the teats awkwardly. In the fields the crops were left overripe and the heads grew heavier and bent lower each day. No scythe was touched, no straw cut, no sheaves bound, no shocks built, no ricks brought the crops to the barn. No one called any longer from the stoop, announcing mealtime, no one went to and from his work, no one went to rest or rose from his bed.

The place seemed desolate, deserted. But a man and a wife remained. She lay in her bed inside the house and seldom made any sound, he moved cautiously when he approached or left her. He went in and out of the house without her noticing. He answered her when she spoke but did not speak to her if she lay with her eyes closed.

During the last days he had not noticed any change in her. She herself had said she knew she would pull through.

Thus a husband kept watch over his wife. Only for the shortest moments did he leave his chair at her bed and stroll outside. Under the clear sky a serene peace reigned over his land these days. There lay his farm with all the crops, trees, fruit, grass — surrendered to itself. Under the flaming sun the earth enjoyed a long, lazy dinner rest. His claim sloped toward the shore, and it seemed as undisturbed and peaceful as the day he had discovered it, resting here and waiting for him since the day of Creation.

When he stepped outside he looked and always peered in the same direction: to the west, where there rose a sandstone cliff which had the appearance of a man’s head, but a hundred thousand times larger. There rose a high cliff wall, glittering red in the sunshine — a wall of threat and danger. The Indian head!

All his life until now he had followed this command: You must always help yourself! Always use your common sense and your strength! In every situation you must only trust your own ability. Never give up in danger! Never think there is no use going on! Always try once more! Never lose heart and say, there is nothing more I can do.

But these days he no longer made decisions as to what happened around him. What happened decided over him. He kept watch on the chair beside his wife’s bed, he walked outside and looked to the west.

And what he did did not help him any more.

— 4—

No more reports about the Indian danger arrived. But Karl Oskar no longer kept track of the days. It had been in the early morning on Wednesday that Kristina took sick, and after that he didn’t count the days. With his whittling knife and a stick he started a new calendar: He cut a notch in the stick every evening — one more day. He cut the first notch on the evening the children had been sent to Cedar Island.

There were three notches now, and it was morning again. He was dozing on his watcher’s chair; fatigue had closed his eyes. He woke up startled by a noise outside.

No one had come to his house these three days. Now someone was knocking on the gable window. He rose and rubbed his smarting eyes. His face was pale gray in the dawn light.

Algot Svensson was outside, his gun under his arm and a good-sized food sack on his back. His torn eye shone dark red like a ripe cherry.

“It’s you, Algot! I thought maybe the redskins had come. .”

“We’re building at the wall, back by the church. I’m only going home to do the milking.”

“Have you heard from the island?”

“I rowed over last night — all is well there. The kids are well and seem to enjoy it.”

“How near are the Indians?”

“Don’t know. Haven’t seen them hereabouts yet.”

About a hundred of the settlers were gathered back at Nordberg’s Island, said Algot. They were digging an entrenchment, and a small cannon had been sent with some men from Fort Snelling. A few more days of preparations and he felt sure they would be able to hold back the redskins at the church. Pastor Stenius himself was helping them, digging like a real farmer, he was so anxious to save the church from the savages’ violation.

But the men were uneasy about their families and farms; the crops were overripe, cows unmilked, calves and smaller animals unfed, and the loose cattle broke into the fields and did damage. This couldn’t go on very long. As far as Algot could learn every farm hereabouts was deserted.

He was going home to look after his animals and then he would take some food and other things to the people on Cedar Island. They had told him last night they had eaten all the potatoes and meat they had with them and had no milk for the children. The boys were chasing and catching rabbits but they had no salt. They had also caught some fish, but they were bothered terribly by mosquitoes and ants.

Algot said he would come back and pick up whatever Karl Oskar might wish to send over to the children, but he didn’t think they were suffering.

The neighbor left, and when Karl Oskar came in again Kristina had awakened. She was talking to herself, her eyes on the ceiling boards as if she were addressing them. He asked if there was anything she wanted but she replied in disjointed, incomprehensible words.

From his wife’s speech Karl Oskar understood that she no longer recognized him.

— 5—

Another day passed with the sun shining unchangeably in a high, cloudless sky. From morning to night Ki-Chi-Saga’s surface glittered in its immobile smoothness. The leafy trees along the shores dipped their boughs in the lake’s water. In the reeds the young ducklings tried their wings, not yet quite ready for the long flight. No activities at the farms now disturbed the large flocks. Brave birds from the forest came and perched on the apple tree at the east gable, now tempting with fruit.

Karl Oskar cut a new notch in his time-counting stick.

Every evening after dark he saw fires in the forest, especially on a tongue of land in the lake to the east. But they didn’t disturb him; they were the settlers’ campfires across from Nordberg’s Island where the entrenchment was being built. The fires burned the night through and their glare was reassuring. The Indian watch was in order and ready. The tillers had gathered to defend their labor; the Chisago people would not be taken unaware.

The night fires in the forest were reminders of danger and war. But in daytime nothing could be seen that heralded imminent threat.

Cedar Island was not visible from this shore, but he could see smoke from the other islands where people from other farms had gone for protection. In the old days these islands had been camping places for the Indians during their hunts. During their first years at Ki-Chi-Saga he had often in the gathering dusk seen the hunting people’s tall flames and heard their eerie cries, so unlike those of ordinary human beings. What they then saw and heard had frightened the newly arrived immigrants, and when the Indians had their powwows, the settlers had stayed away from their fields so as not to divulge their presence. Now the whites had fled their new homes and sought safety in the redskins’ old camping grounds.

The whole section was now empty of people. But one morning a rider from the legislature in St. Paul came by and asked the way to Taylors Falls. He had no special news about the Sioux uprising, which had happened so unexpectedly, but he felt sure Colonel Sibley would choke it. Several thousand settlers from the counties around St. Paul had also gathered and been armed.

The rider spoke of the prices on Indian scalps: Tuesday, last week, twenty dollars had been paid for a redskin scalp in St. Paul, but by Thursday the price had risen to fifty dollars, and by Saturday to a hundred. With each new report of the Sioux cruelty to the whites the value of their scalps rose. The man from the legislature thought the price of redskin scalps would reach two hundred dollars before the end of the war.

Karl Oskar pondered the remarkable in this: Only when dead was a red man valued highly. Before the uprising no white would have offered a tenth as much for a living Indian.

The days which he marked on his stick slid away from him in a strange drowsiness. He sat watch by his wife night and day, he dozed for short intervals sitting on the chair. Daylight and darkness followed each other, but day and night mingled in one endless, monotonous, unchangeable day. Time did not move forward one second. It had stopped still for him. Yet when he picked up the knife to whittle a new notch he knew another day had again passed.

He worked his way forward on the stick to Tuesday, August 26. And still Kristina did not recognize him.

— 6—

Karl Oskar lived his present life in the events closest to him. Therefore, he didn’t know afterward on which of his watch-days the report finally came — the message that the Indian uprising had been put down.

A couple of settlers on their way back to their deserted farms told him about it. He thought he knew them, but later he couldn’t recall their names or where they lived. They said that Colonel Sibley had come in time to relieve Fort Ridgely and New Ulm, and since the Sioux couldn’t storm those portals to the Minnesota Valley they would not be able to reach the St. Croix Valley. The settlers could now return to their chores. All the refugees on the Chisago Lake islands could return to their homes.

Karl Oskar seemed rather surprised at the men’s tale; he listened to their report as if it didn’t concern him, as if the Indian fright in some way had not pertained to him. The panic was over? The redskins were stopped! All could return home? But he was already home. He had been in his house all the time. He was on his farm, he need not return.

He was the only settler in the St. Croix Valley who had remained in his house during the Indian panic those August days. He had kept watch over his wife as long as her life lasted.

XV. THE ASTRAKHAN APPLES ARE RIPE

— 1—

The sun had just risen; it shone through the gable window and slowly searched its way to the bed where Kristina lay. She had opened her eyes. On her forehead near the hairline drops of perspiration glittered; her complexion was refreshed and rosy. Her cheeks blossomed: A young girl’s coloring had returned to her after twenty years.

A moment before she had complained faintly in her sleep. Karl Oskar had picked up a towel and gently dried her moist forehead. When he bent over her, he saw in her eyes that she recognized him. For the first time in three days she knew him again.

Her voice was so low he had to make an effort to catch the words.

“Is it already morning?”

“Yea — but pretty early.”

“So quiet — the others aren’t up yet?”

“No. .”

“The children. . all of them are asleep. .?”

“I think so.”

“Only you up. . already?”

“I have not been in bed.”

“You’ve watched over me?”

“Yes. .”

“How kind of you. I must have slept long. .”

“You have slept a long while.”

“I dreamed I was swinging. . you remember the ox thong I used to put up in the barn at home. .”

The blanket on Kristina’s chest rose and fell in rapid, short movements. Her breathing had been quicker and panting these last days.

“I was at home in the barn, swinging and carrying on. .”

“Can I give you something?”

“Only a mouthful of water. I’m thirsty.”

He held the pitcher to her mouth and she tried to lift her head but it sank down on the pillow again. His left hand steadied her at the back of her head.

She drank slowly, swallow after swallow.

“I can’t swallow very well. .”

A few big drops escaped and ran slowly down her chin; the sun glittered in them. When his hand touched her he felt the glow of fever that burned in her body.

“Thanks, dear Karl Oskar. .”

She made a motion with her shoulders as if wishing to sit up.

“Better lie down, dear. .”

“But I’m not sick. Only mightily tired. .”

“You must rest, you aren’t strong yet. .”

The silence inside was unbroken again, but down in the chicken pen the rooster started his shrill morning crowing. Something dark fluttered past the gable window, wings flapped; a bird had just lighted in the apple tree. The boughs of the Astrakhan tree were loaded down with fruit as big as newborn babies’ heads. Against the dark green leaves the apples shimmered golden-red.

The sun moved and spread its golden squares over Kristina’s blanket. By and by it reached a bottle and a spoon on the table beside the bed. The bottle was empty. It had contained the medicine for childbirth fever.

Every time Karl Oskar moved on his chair he was conscious of a fatigue from his long lack of sleep which threatened to close his eyes.

Suddenly Kristina put out her hand and fumbled for support.

“I’m falling! Hold onto me!”

“Don’t be afraid — you’re safe in your bed.”

But her fingers clasped his anxiously.

“The thong! The swing! I’m falling out!”

“It’s all right. Nothing to be afraid of. .”

“Karl Oskar! Please. . hold me. . hold. .!”

She tried to raise herself in the bed. He took her by the shoulders, helped her to lie down again, and comforted her.

— 2—

Once again Kristina is thrown by the swing she has made of the ox thong in the barn at home in Duvemåla.

She swings from floor to ceiling, from ceiling to floor again. She rides up and down in the thong, she feels dizzy and cries out in fear and joy. She is playful and giddy and happy, like other young girls. She skips lightly on her feet, she plays and carries on and enjoys herself while youth is still in her body. Soon enough she will grow old and heavy on her feet, and then she can no longer ride a swing.

But she is thrown high, so high — far, far away from her father’s barn. Frightened to the bottom of her heart she looks about and does not recognize her surroundings. She is not swinging in the ox thong any more, she is on a ship, sailing on a great water, and on that ship she is thrown up and down through the air. She is on an ocean with high waves, and the waves lift her heavenward and lower her into the depths. She flies through the air, she is flung into the black abyss, she is dizzy again and cries out. But she is entirely alone out on the sea, no one hears her cries, no one answers her, no one comes to help her.

Where is Karl Oskar? Why doesn’t he hear? Why doesn’t he come and help her away from here? What’s she doing here on a ship anyway? Why did she go to the sea?

It was Karl Oskar who wanted it. She must go with him, he didn’t give up until she promised. She didn’t want to, but a wife must do what her husband wants.

The swing slows down, and she gets off again. She is a wife, a mother, a woman who bears children. She has returned from her journey. She is already old. Karl Oskar and she have been married for many years, and she is a tired and aged woman. She’ll never be able to swing in the barn again. She has been through many childbeds, she has borne living children and dead. Once she carried a child without life in it which Karl Oskar buried somewhere out in the woods, she doesn’t know where.

But now once more she must go through it, one childbed more, but only one more. She will survive her tenth childbed. And then. .!

Then — oh, then she’ll rest, rest till she gets rid of her immense tiredness. To lie still, sleep! To sink down in wonderful, sweet sleep! If she only could rest all she wished, then she would get well again. Then she would pull through. There is no cure for her other than this: sleep, sleep!

— 3—

For a long time she had been in a coma but kept her hand about his fingers. He had been sitting without making any motion. Consciousness left her one moment and came back the next, but for three days it had not been with her long enough for him to talk to her as he had wished. There was something very important he wanted to tell his wife, something he wanted to ask her. During all the time he had been watching at her bed he had had the words on his tongue, in his thoughts he had spoken them innumerable times, mumbled them to himself, whispered them, stammered them:

Don’t die and leave me! Stay with me yet!

It was she herself he wanted to ask. Unlike Kristina he could not ask another One.

Beads of perspiration appeared on her fever-sick forehead, and he dried them as lightly, as gently as he could. But she felt his touch and opened her eyes. She spoke as if short of breath:

“You’re here, Karl Oskar. .?”

“I guess I woke you.”

“I fainted away. Did I cry some. .?”

“Not a sound.”

“I have no pain any more.”

“But you’re weak.”

“I’ll pull through. All I need is enough sleep.”

“I hope you’re right.”

“Don’t worry! But you must need some sleep yourself, Karl Oskar!”

“Forget about me!”

“You’re black under the eyes. You’ve been up watching me. You’ve worn yourself out!”

“It’s nothing.”

She was short of breath from her effort to speak. The movements under the blanket increased.

When her fast breathing subsided somewhat, she resumed:

“I am really better!”

“Truly, Kristina?”

“Yes. You needn’t watch over me any more. Tonight you can sleep.”

Karl Oskar blinked as if he had something in his eyes. He swallowed hard a few times as he looked intently at his wife in the bed.

“Remember: Tonight you can sleep!”

The noise of fluttering wings was heard again from the apple tree outside the window. Karl Oskar looked out. A bird was sitting on a branch, pecking at an apple. The Astrakhan apples were soft and juicy, and the birds went after them greedily.

Often this summer Kristina had felt the apples with her fingers and wondered: When will they be ripe? If the birds now were after them they must be ready to eat.

Karl Oskar rose and went out. He walked to the tree and from one of the lowest branches he picked a large, beautiful apple. He could feel it was soft, it must be ripe. It was still moist from the morning dew; through the skin he could see the juicy meat.

He went inside and put the big apple on the blanket before Kristina. “Look — your Astrakhans are ripe!”

Her fever-inflamed eyes looked at the fruit; they stared at it as if she hadn’t understood what he meant.

“You must taste our first apple, Kristina!”

He put it in her hand and she held it.

“It’s the first from your tree, Kristina!”

The sick woman did not understand; she couldn’t grasp that she held an apple in her hand. She moved it slowly toward her mouth, as if curious as to what she held in her fingers. Her lips touched the clear, dew-washed fruit. The transparent skin was like the tender skin of a small child.

She did not bite into the apple, but only caressed it with her lips.

“Aren’t you able to taste it?”

“Yes, yes. It feels soft. .”

“It’s ripe and juicy.”

“It smells good.” She stared at the apple in her hand.

“Can’t you take one bite?” He added, encouragingly, “Astrakhans have a fresh taste.”

Kristina moved the apple toward her teeth and bit off a very small piece. The juice moistened the corners of her mouth.

“Where did you get it, Karl Oskar. .?”

“From your tree out there, of course! The first one picked from that tree!”

Kristina did not swallow the piece she had bit off. She still looked in wonder at the fruit.

“I guess you aren’t strong enough to eat it?”

“Oh yes, I’ll eat it. .”

At last she seemed to understand: “Now I can see — it’s an Astrakhan. .!”

And her voice vibrated at the discovery she had made.

“I recognize it now! It tastes like our apples! Our apples at home!”

Again she moved it to her mouth. But her teeth did not bite into it again, only her lips parted.

Suddenly the mouth grew stiff, the lower jaw stopped in an attempted motion. The eyelids twitched and the whites became enlarged. Her breath was drawn out while the voice grew even weaker. “I recognize it. . our Astrakhans are ripe. .”

Then there came only a soft sigh as she breathed out:

“Our apples are ripe. I’m home. .”

There was a spasm in her arms, then they lay still and the hand’s hold on the fruit loosened. The big apple rolled slowly down the slope of the blanket and fell with a thud on the floor near the bed.

Karl Oskar bent down and picked it up; he put it back in his wife’s open hand.

But this time she did not take it, her fingers did not grasp it, her hand did not close around it. Kristina’s hand lay still and open on the blanket, and the apple fell for a second time to the floor.

Karl Oskar looked at it and rose with a start. He bent over his wife and saw the blanket over her chest rise slowly and sink down just as slowly. Then it did not rise again. The movement was not repeated.

“Kristina!” he cried out. “Stay with . .!”

Karl Oskar stood bent over his wife. Her eyes were half-open, and the whites glittered in their rigidity. The blanket over her chest did not rise again. No movement was visible in her — in her eyes, in her chest, in her limbs, nowhere in her body. The light in her eyes was extinguished and no breath flowed from her mouth.

In one corner of her mouth the little apple bite remained.

Karl Oskar stood as rigid as stone for a long time, staring into her unseeing eyes, listening for her lost breath. Only this moment she had tasted an apple — it was incomprehensible to him that she no longer saw him and that her breath didn’t come back.

XVI. THE THIRD COFFIN

In the old log cabin where the family had lived during their first years as settlers there now shone a night light. This cabin had been built to serve as a home but after the completion of the new house it had been used as a workshop. A large carpenter’s bench stood against one wall. Now a man stood at the bench and worked in the light of a candle lantern which hung from a beam in the ceiling; he was making a coffin for his wife.

To him fell a task which could not be delayed and which he must complete during the night. Hurriedly, untiring, his plane moved over the wood, as he smoothed boards that had been cut from oak timber. But the boards had been intended for another use. They had been sawed and stacked for the building of a house. They were meant for a new main house that he would build, but now they must be used for another purpose. The oak boards would not form the walls of a house where he and his wife would live out their lives. Of the boards he built instead her home after death.

Earlier he had built houses and homes for himself and his wife for life’s time which in fleeting years would pass by, but the room he now built was for the time of death, which had no end. In this house she would stay.

Many times he had said to her: Next time I build. .

That time had come. But now he built only for her.

The plane moved its even path back and forth over the board and spewed out long shavings which coiled like white snakes on the floor. The light from the candle in the lantern above the carpenter’s head fell in a circle over the bench and lit him in his work with its fluttering rays. Round about him in the cabin were dim shadows. On the walls skins of animals had been nailed up to dry; shrouds that had belonged to four-legged beings hung there, limbs outstretched, as if crucified.

The plane dug and bit with its sharp iron tooth and tore shavings from the board. The shavings gathered in piles, coiled around his wrists, and rustled under his feet. The oak board was prime timber, hard under the plane, first class. It was white oak — no timber existed that lasted longer, no wood was better suited to wall a permanent resting place.

Twice before in his life the man at the workbench had made coffins. The first he had made in his homeland for a daughter who from hunger had eaten herself to death. That time he had stood out in a woodshed and worked. That time he was still a beginner in the carpenter’s handicraft, his hands unused to plane and hammer, and he had had poor lumber for the coffin: only old boards, knotty and badly sawed, cracked and warped. He had chosen and discarded — very little had been needed for the girl’s coffin. She had died early in life, when she was only four years old. It had not required many boards to enclose that little body. But he had sought out the clear and knot-free ones, he had chosen the finest planks he could find.

It had been difficult for him that time, for his plane was dull and unsharpened, the hammerhead flew off, refusing to stay on its handle, and it had been his first coffin, his journeyman effort.

(The carpenter’s questions: This daughter was very dear to me, but before she was four years old she was taken from me and died in terrible pain. She died before she had had time to commit any crimes. Did God wish thereby to punish me for my transgressions? But one hears only of a God who is good and just. Can he who is good and just punish the innocent for the deeds of the guilty? Does he let my children inherit my sins? I have never wondered over this before, but now I do: Is our God good and just?)

The first coffin he made was just big enough so that he could carry it alone when his daughter’s body was placed in it. He had carried it in his arms to the grave.

That was a father’s labor for his child.

The second coffin he had made many years later, in another country. He had made it in the very place where he now stood, in this workshop, at this bench. That work was done one summer when haying had just started and he had been rushed to do it during a few humid nights.

They had found his dead brother’s body in the forest. He had returned from the gold-land with a deadly sickness in his body which they had known nothing about. They had thought he was telling them lies and wanted to cheat them with his false riches, but he himself had been the victim of a cheater.

(The carpenter’s thoughts: We came from the same womb and you were my only brother, but we became strangers to each other. You lied and told tales until I couldn’t believe anything you said. But now I know that you yourself believed in the value of the money you wanted to give us. You brought us a gift, you wanted to share your abundance with your brother. But I could not trust you, and the hand I offered at parting was hard and fisted and hit you in the face.

You said you forgave me. And now here at the bench I say my real goodbye to you: I prepare your last home. The same hand that hit you is now hammering together the walls that will forever be yours. The same hand that hurt you is now trying to make you a good resting place. Here you will lie protected from all that pursued you. And I will put the lid over a brother who was a riddle to me.)

That had been the carpenter’s second coffin. By then he was experienced and could handle his tools, and the coffin had been a fine piece of work.

It had been a brother’s labor for a brother.

Again the years had run by, and now he stood here once more, in the same workshop, at the same bench, and performed the same labor he had completed twice before in his life. Now he was making a coffin for the woman who had been his wife, who had been his helpmeet, who had borne his children. Almost twenty years they had lived together. They had shared their home, their bread, and their bed. Twice, on two different continents, they had set up house together. Through all the years she had shared with him the day’s labor and the night’s rest.

She had said: I have One I can put my trust in! There is One who will pull me through! Therefore you must not worry! You must have the same confidence as I! And I have surrendered to his hands! I’ll pull through! All will be well with me!

She had said this to him on the path along the lake one evening in June. Now August counted its last days, and of his wife was left him only her lifeless body.

(The carpenter had received his answer: She trusted in God, but he tricked her. She was a credulous child who surrendered to her Father in heaven. But the Father failed her. He let her die. Now I know what happens to one who trusts in God Almighty. If she hadn’t done so, she would be alive. She was taken from me and the children because she trusted in the Lord.

Now I know: God is nothing for a human being to put trust in.)

The carpenter stood in the night at his bench and worked in the feeble, fluttering light from a stable lantern. The plane moved evenly back and forth over the wood. It rasped and cut, its iron tooth scraped shavings from the oak plank. The shavings fell in coils from the bench and gathered around the carpenter’s feet. Above his plane the lantern swung slowly back and forth, setting in motion shadows on the walls where the pelts were nailed up; the crucified stood guard around the bench, saluting the carpenter with their extended, securely nailed limbs.

Again the carpenter was busy at his work. It was his third coffin.

It was a husband’s labor for his wife.

XVII. SONG UNDER THIRTY-EIGHT GALLOWS

Fort Ridgely and New Ulm were relieved during the last days of August; the two portals to the Minnesota Valley remained closed to the Sioux. Little Crow was finally defeated at Wood Lake on September 23. His warriors were scattered and disarmed later in the fall.

The Sioux uprising in Minnesota was the bloodiest Indian war in North America. More than a thousand white settlers were killed, a region two hundred by one hundred miles was ravaged and deserted, and thirty thousand people were homeless.

Many thousand Sioux were taken prisoner and a military court sentenced 303 of them to hanging. Abraham Lincoln reprieved 265 of these. The remaining 38 were hung at Mankato on December 26, 1862.

— 1—

In October 1861, at Mankato, the Sioux chief Red Iron had pleaded his people’s situation to Governor Ramsey, and in the same spot, a little over a year later, the final reckoning took place between Indians and whites in Minnesota.

A large warehouse was used as an Indian prison and to the stone floor of this building thirty-eight Sioux warriors were chained, awaiting their death sentence. When the date finally was set they asked to be permitted to dance their death dance in the prison yard the day before the hanging. This was refused them.

Early in the morning on December 26, fifteen hundred soldiers were called to stand guard around the prison yard where the hanging would take place. An enormous gallows had been erected: a circular iron ring from which thirty-eight ropes dangled.

It was a cold winter morning with a biting norther sweeping from the prairies across the prison yard. The prisoners were brought out in a group, their hands tied behind their backs. Not one of them uttered a defiant word. As soon as they were in the yard they saw before them the large gallows with the ropes swaying in the wind. Then a stir went through the group: They began to sing, all at one time. They were singing their death song in unison.

An eerie, penetrating sound came from the condemned prisoners’ throats; it sounded like a prolonged ij: ijiji — ijiji — ijiji. One single syllable of complaint, the eternal, sad ijiji — ijiji — ijiji — ijiji. The Indians were singing their death song. It came from thirty-eight human throats, it was thirty-eight human beings’ final utterance: ijiji — ijiji — ijiji.

The prisoners approached the great gallows — the iron ring with the thirty-eight swinging ropes — and they sang uninterruptedly as they walked, they sang the whole way. They sang as they climbed the scaffold, they sang as they stood under the ropes, they continued to sing as the ropes were placed around their necks. They sang in their lives’ last moment.

At a given sign thirty-eight people dangled together from their ropes, a circular gallows of kicking, wriggling bodies. Then the song died, and after a few minutes the ropes hung straight with their catch and did not sway any longer in the wind.

It was a cold winter morning with a biting norther. The song of the thirty-eight under the gallows ropes at Mankato was the death song of the Minnesota Indians. Thus ended their last attempt to drive out the intruders and take back their land.

— 2—

The Indians had been put down, but The Indian remained.

At the shore of Ki-Chi-Saga the hunter people’s watchtower of stone, the Indian head, still stood. The fall storms had been hard on him, tearing the green leaves from his summer-wreathed forehead. Bare, black branches sprouted from the skull and pointed heavenward, the red glow on his forehead was gone, and the cave-eyes had blackened and seemed to have withdrawn deeper into the cliff. And during the winter following the Sioux uprising, immense blocks fell from the Indian’s eyes to lie at the base of the cliff.

The Indian was mourning. He was mourning his people’s decline. From his elevated position he looked out over the hunting grounds his kinfolk never more were to use, the clear lakes that never more would carry their canoes, he saw the islands and shores where their campfires never more would be lit.

Above Ki-Chi-Saga’s water the Indian rose, rigid and silent in his sorrow, the prisoner chained in stone. He did not weep human tears, it was not water that flowed from his eyes, it was not drops of an evanescent fluid. He shed tears of stone — indestructible, eternal as the cliff itself. In these was his complaint — his sorrow over his people’s destruction, their decay and death. A new race had come to take the place of the vanquished.

Thus one people obliterates another from the face of the earth, and the earth sucks the blood of the dead, and turns green and blossoms as before for the living.

The Indian head still stands, green-wreathed in summer, bare and naked in winter. From his eyes still fall the boulders that gather at his feet. In his eternal petrification the Indian to this day mourns his dead.

XVIII. ONE MAN DID NOT WISH TO SUBMIT

— 1—

The unforgettable year of the Sioux uprising came to its close and another began its cycle.

In the oldest homestead on Chisago Lake, they were one less in the family; there was no longer a wife or mother. The survivors tried to divide the chores of the dead one among them, but all the things she alone knew how to do remained undone. They were, and remained, one less in the house, a wife and a mother.

Better news came from the world outside. For two years only defeats for the North in the Civil War had been reported, but now they could read in the papers of victories for the Union soldiers. Already in the spring the news was good, and at haying time — in the beginning of July — a still greater victory was announced. It had taken place in Pennsylvania, near a town called Gettysburg. The battle was the most important in the whole Civil War, said the papers, predicting that the rebels would give up before the year was out. Earlier in the year President Lincoln had proclaimed all Negroes free from slavery.

But the rebels were not defeated, they won new victories, and at the end of this year also the war was still on. Now the North needed soldiers to replace those who had fallen, and at last conscription was resorted to.

To Karl Oskar Nilsson the conscription brought no change. Once rejected he need not go, nor need he send a man in his place, as many ablebodied men did.

The North still had plenty of men to fill the vacancies left by the dead, but in the South the manpower was running low, and that was why no one up north any longer feared the war would be lost.

There were settlers at Chisago Lake who would just as soon see the human slaughter go on forever. During the Civil War the merchants made good profits. Klas Albert, Karl Oskar’s neighbor in Sweden, bragged that he had sold an old inventory at unexpectedly high prices. He could never have disposed of it except for the Civil War. Karl Oskar told him he ought to go to the war himself since he was strong and ablebodied and a bachelor besides. But Klas Albert replied that no one in his right mind would go to war unless he were forced, and he was still of sound mind. And when conscription was put in effect he hired his clerk to do the service for him.

The Swedish church warden’s Klas Albert had, in a short time, prospered out here and was now Mr. C. A. Persson, owner of the biggest store in Center City. All day long customers thronged to his counter and money rolled in as fast as he could handle it. He had found an occupation that suited him, and in the right country. None of the emigrants from Ljuder was as successful as Mr. Persson.

Karl Oskar was prejudiced against all merchants and did not like Klas Albert too much. He felt he grew rich on his fellow immigrants. Whether he bought or sold, he always managed it to his own advantage, and if the farmers hadn’t brought forth from the earth the things he bought and sold he would have had nothing to profit from.

— 2—

The earliest settler at Chisago Lake changed to a remarkable degree after his wife’s death. He had always preferred to keep silent rather than speak unnecessarily and now he grew ever stingier with his words. At home, he divided the chores among his children and explained how to perform them, praised them when something was well done, scolded them when they were careless or negligent. Aside from this he seldom spoke. And even outside the home he became known as sparing of words. He would have less and less to do with people, he resigned from all his activities for the county and the parish. From now on he would not be a spokesman for others, only attend to his own business. He stopped going to parish meetings, and the Chisago people wondered and talked as Karl Oskar Nilsson never went to church after his wife’s death.

The widower lived almost like a hermit, he closed himself off from the world outside his home and more and more turned inward. He faced each day in turn; he was able to endure his life only one day at a time.

Only each day in turn could he face the loss of Kristina.

The first weeks after her death he thought each morning as he awoke: I must live this day without her. And tomorrow I must live through the day without her. The same the day after tomorrow. So it shall be for me during all my remaining days. During all the time allotted me in life I will be without her.

It was every morning’s reminder. And each day in turn was more than enough. Maybe he could manage one day? Maybe he could manage his whole life if he divided it into the small parts of single days. At first it had seemed, as it came over him in the morning, that he could not endure this heavy loss, and he began saying to himself each morning: This day I am without her. But only today. He pushed away the following day and the next day, and the next day, and all the following days, to let them take care of themselves. They had not yet come, and perhaps they never would come.

His days without Kristina gathered into weeks, months, and years. He could already say: Last year when I lost my wife. Soon he could say: The year before last, when I lost my wife. And eventually it would be: The year I lost my wife, that was long, long ago. And by then the loss of her would be gone, with his own life.

So Karl Oskar divided his sorrow into days and thought that in so doing it would be easier for him to bear.

In the evening he might stop on the path from the stable to the main house, as if waiting for her. Here she would be coming with her milk pails, one in each hand, and he must help her carry them. He would always help her when he was about. Can I give you a hand, Kristina? She would reply: So kind of you, Karl Oskar! Now she no longer came along the path as she used to, and he stood there desolate. Didn’t he know it? Would he never understand it? There were no more pails to be carried for Kristina. He had no wife. He had raised a cross over her in the cemetery.

On warm summer evenings he would tend the beds under the window, weed the peas and the beans and water them, and it sometimes happened that he caught himself listening through the open window: Wasn’t that Kristina’s sewing machine in there? No. Now there was no whir from the balance wheel, no noise from the pedals under her feet. And her loom stood silent. She used to sing while weaving, she wanted to muffle the loom’s noise, she said. But he liked the sound of the loom coming from inside the house, and he would stand there and listen for the shuttle.

And so each time Karl Oskar found himself equally disappointed when he compared the past and the present: Kristina’s sewing machine had been put aside in a corner and emitted no sound, and from the loom her shuttle would never sing again.

In such moments he spoke aloud to Kristina: If I had followed my common sense you would still be with me! If you hadn’t trusted in God you’d still be alive!

But she had said a few words which he remembered and would keep well during his remaining years. They had once been uttered by her lips, they were heard by his ears, he would keep them well. It was her answer to him: Don’t worry about me, Karl Oskar. I’m in good keeping.

— 3—

It was Whitsuntide Eve and the house was being cleaned for the holiday. Karl Oskar was on his knees on an old sack scrubbing the stoop floor. He dipped the brush into the hot soap lye and scrubbed the planks with all his might, he scratched, he scrubbed, he rubbed. But whatever he did he couldn’t get the floor as clean and white as he knew it should be. The dirt seemed to be glued between the boards; it must be poor soap, he thought. When they first came out here he had made the soap himself, from ashes and pork fat. But Kristina had complained that it didn’t remove the dirt entirely. When she washed linen she refused to use his homemade soap and bought some from Klas Albert.

Well, the stoop floor would have to be good enough the way it was. Many other things had to be good enough nowadays, even if they weren’t as they were before.

“My goodness, Karl Oskar! Are you scrubbing the floor!”

He recognized the voice, it was a woman’s. She stood behind him on the stoop, dressed in an ample coat and wide hat. The scrubbing brush had made such noise he hadn’t heard her coming.

“Ulrika. .!”

“Good for you! Cleaning your house yourself!”

He moved his hand to his left leg, sore from lying on the boards, and rose slowly with the brush in his hand. The scrub water dripped from his wet knees.

He was a little embarrassed and it annoyed him.

“Now you’re a real American, Karl Oskar!”

“I wanted to help Marta tidy up a little. But I don’t care for housework.”

“I bet you don’t!”

And Mrs. Henry O. Jackson laughed the loud laughter of the Glad One: “You aren’t ashamed of it?”

“Ashamed of woman-work? That’s only in Sweden.”

“You bet! Not Svenske any more!”

Ulrika knew that even while Kristina was alive he had started to help with milking and dishwashing, but so much had remained in him of the Swedish attitude that he had refused to scrub floors. Now she saw that this Swedish defect had left him.

“At last you’re a real American!”

“Shall I bow at the praise. .”

“The best praise I can give a man!”

“But I’m not good at scrubbing. .” He pushed the pail aside. “Nothing is in order with us. . But come in, Ulrika! Long time since you were here.”

“I wanted to see my goddaughter on her birthday. Couldn’t make it, though.”

They went inside and sat down in the big room. Karl Oskar called Marta and told her to prepare something for their guest. But Ulrika explained that she was in a great hurry; she must get home and help Henry prepare for the Baptist love feast which they would celebrate tomorrow with the breaking of bread. She had been to St. Paul, to her eldest daughters wedding. Elin had married none less than the chief of police of St. Paul. Her daughter was now in safe hands, and she hoped she could trust the police in America. Elin had worked in his house as a maid, and then a year ago his wife had died, and less than two months later the widower had proposed to her.

“Your girl has done well,” said Karl Oskar.

Elin had a strong will, explained the mother. From the very first day in America she had shown she wanted to get ahead. Even that winter when they lived with Danjel in his old log cabin, the girl sat up half the nights and learned the American names for knives, forks, plates, spoons, and everything about the house. She wanted to be a maidservant. But when she got her first job with Mr. Hanley in Stillwater she still didn’t know the names of the days. She dressed for church on Friday, and did housecleaning on Sunday, and sent out the wash on the wrong day. The girl had started from the beginning and worked her way up. And since the day before yesterday Elin was Mrs. William A. Aldridge, and she needn’t be ashamed of that name in St. Paul.

“Well, well,” said Karl Oskar. “So you’ve been to a wedding. Last time you were in this house. .”

He stopped short and looked aside.

Ulrika had not been to see them for almost two years; the last time had been at Kristina’s funeral. During his wife’s last illness Mrs. Jackson and her husband had been in Chicago but they had returned in time for the burial. And not until after Kristina’s funeral had Ulrika heard that she had died from a miscarriage.

“Yes, last time I was here there was mourning in this house.”

A silence ensued for a moment. It was difficult for either one of them to continue. Dr. Farnley’s strong admonition had never been referred to between them after Kristina’s death. Ulrika was not one to reproach a wretched man, but sooner or later she aimed to let him know what she thought.

“I feel sorry for you, Karl Oskar. It’s hard to live single.”

“What you must go through, you manage. .”

“I guess you keep thinking about it?”

“Thinking about what?”

“What you did. Causing it yourself.”

Karl Oskar raised his head with a sudden jerk.

“You didn’t take care of Kristina. You got her with child again. That’s why you’re single and alone!”

His face had turned deep red. He swallowed and swallowed but said nothing.

“You were warned!” she continued. “The doctor’s report was delivered to you: She cannot survive another childbed! But you exposed Kristina to that danger.”

He stared straight at her but let her go on.

“I never blame you for Kristina’s death. I know you couldn’t help it. You couldn’t control yourself any longer, of course. You have a man’s need. You were weak and sinned in weakness. But those sins are the smallest. .”

“You think. .” His voice was thick and he swallowed hard. “You think. . I myself killed Kristina. .”

“I’m not calling you a wife-killer! You did it out of weakness. Your kind of body isn’t built to stay away from your wife. It’s excusable. I don’t blame you for it!”

“You’re wrong! You’re very wrong!”

“It hurts to talk about it, of course. I shouldn’t have started. You’ve lost your wife and can’t get her back. What’s the use of talking about it. I must hurry!”

She rose to leave.

“Yes, we must talk about it! Sit down, Ulrika! Sit down!”

Suddenly Karl Oskar had become quick in his movements; he pushed the chair toward Mrs. Jackson again.

“You’re wrong, exactly wrong! But I’ll tell you! Just sit down!”

“All right, I will — if you yourself want to talk about it.”

Ulrika sat down again and listened intently for a few minutes while Karl Oskar Nilsson spoke. She learned that she had been wrong. She learned that he had obeyed the doctor for three months, and that he had intended to keep on obeying. But one evening Kristina had come to him and said that she didn’t believe God had burdened them with this. She trusted more in God than in the doctor in Stillwater. That was how it had happened.

“It was Kristina who wanted it!”

“She did? Poor dear child!”

Ulrika was deeply moved by what she had heard, tears quivered in her eyes and her voice vibrated:

“The dear child! She trusted her God! Good, honest Kristina!”

She could not remember when she had last wept. She pulled a handkerchief from her skirt pocket and dried her eyes.

“But I’m not trying to blame it on Kristina — I should have had better sense.”

“No one can hold it against you, of course.”

“I should have known better. It’ll always be on my conscience.”

“You only committed a sin of weakness. The Lord is eager to forgive sins of weakness. God will forgive you, I know it! You can be sure of it, Karl Oskar!”

“God. . forgive. . me. .!”

Karl Oskar Nilsson jumped up so suddenly that his chair turned over and was thrown against the wall. His big nose shot out as if it had been a weapon to use against Ulrika, his eyes glittered and his mouth worked. His last word was a roar, and Ulrika shot up from her chair as fast as he.

“Shall I ask God for forgiveness? Because he took Kristina from me?”

“What’s come over you, man?”

She had never seen such an explosion of anger in Karl Oskar. Ulrika had never let men frighten her, but now she was as frightened as a woman of her sort could be.

“Are you going crazy? I don’t recognize you!”

“You said God will forgive me! It’s he who ought to ask my forgiveness! For he tricked Kristina!”

“God tricked. .? You are crazy, man!”

“Kristina lost her life because she trusted in God. He tricked her!”

“You blaspheme, poor man! You curse the High One!”

“She died and left me alone! God is to blame!”

“Have you lost your mind, Karl Oskar?”

“No — now I’ve got it back again. But I had lost it that time. And now I only listen to my own common sense. .”

“You talk as if you were out of your mind.”

“No! I'll never forgive God for cheating Kristina! Never, as long as I live!”

“But when you die — do you mean to die and not be reconciled to your God?”

He stood with his back to her and did not reply; he had turned toward the wall.

Ulrika had heard him blaspheme and she was frightened. How could a wretched, helpless human being get the notion to turn against the Almighty? Either she had never known who Karl Oskar was or he had changed after losing his wife.

“God will find you too, Nilsson! God will bend you!”

He had suddenly become so alien to her that she used his surname.

He still kept his silence, with his back to her, staring before him as if he had suddenly discovered something remarkable on the bare wall. Ulrika felt perplexed; what had happened to Kristina’s widower? Perhaps he mourned her so inconsolably that she must overlook his behavior. He was a bereft man, a suffering man. Above all, she must console him. It was comforting he needed.

Mrs. Jackson laid her hand on his shoulder, her voice sweet and pleading: “God has taken Kristina home to him. She is in heaven now, as you surely know. .”

“She didn’t want to die. .” he stuttered forth. “She wanted to stay with me and the children.”

“It must be a comfort to you that she’s in eternal bliss.”

“But she wanted to be here with us — she said so many times: I don’t want to die yet!”

When Karl Oskar didn’t show any joy because Kristina was happy in her eternal home in heaven, Ulrika no longer knew what comfort to offer him.

But she went on: He was the most ungrateful person she had ever known. How much didn’t he have to thank God for? All had gone well for him — he was well-to-do and needn’t worry about earthly things. Kristina had borne him many children, all well shaped and healthy. Many parents were given blind, deformed, or feeble-minded offspring. He himself was still in good health and had his strength. The Lord had until now helped him through all life’s vicissitudes. How many times might he not have perished? Indeed, God had held his protecting hand over him! Instead of blaspheming the Almighty he ought to thank and praise him! He ought to go down on his knees, as he had just done while scrubbing the stoop, and thank God in humble submission!

She talked, but no one listened to her. Karl Oskar didn’t hear her. He only stared at the wall. What in the world did he see there? Nothing but the paper — old pink roses, faded, spotted. He stared at the empty wall. He stared as if he saw a vision, as if his ears were plugged up; he stared at nothing.

How could one talk sense to a person who acted like that? Staring at a wall he had seen every day for many years! There was nothing to be done with Karl Oskar; she could do nothing but feel sorry for him. He did not move, he did not hear — it seemed he would remain in that position and stare at the old, spotted, faded wallpaper forever. Yet, perhaps he saw something in the emptiness.

Ulrika silently opened the door and walked out onto the stoop and away.

In this house she left behind today a man who did not wish to submit — a man who hated his God.

XIX. THE LETTER TO SWEDEN

New Duvemåla Settlement at Center City Post

Offis, April 23, 1865.

Dear Sister Lydia Karlsson,

May all be well with you is my daily Wish.

You write at long Intervals but you shall not think I have forgotten my only Sister. I have been sitting a few Evenings now and writing a letter to You.

First I want to tell you that the War is over and the Enemy beaten. The hard-necked Rebels are giving up everywhere. On the Battle Fields all is Stillness and Silence, all soldiers are going back to their homes. 100,000 Dollars has been promised to the one who can catch President Jefferson of the South. Much destruction has taken place but the Union between the States is safe for time to come.

Great Joy was spread here because of all the good News but like turning a Hand it became Sorrow instead. Our greatly beloved President Abraham Lincoln fell from a murderer’s Bullet the 14 April. It happened in the evening when he had gone to view a Theatre in Washington, the message flew like a bolt of lightning over the whole land by the Telegraph. That moment I shall never forget.

I was in Stellwater with a load of potatoes that day. In all places of labor the tools were laid down and each one went to his home. Stores and Houses were draped in black, and many flags on half mast to show the sorrow. Much Lamentation was heard in the streets. Old men cried like Babies.

For here nothing is like in Sweden, people are not ordered to Mourn when the Head of the Nation passes but all happens of free Will. Our President was called the country’s Father and we mourn him like a Father in the Flesh. He fought for the Right of the Poor, He made the Black free from Slavery, unchained their chains. The People had entrusted their government to Him. His portrait hangs in many houses for all to see. A man worthy of Honor is honored in Our Republic.

Father Abe’s murderer is Taken, shot through the head, for he did not wish to be taken in Life. Old Honest Abe will be brought to his home village in Springfield and will be buried there. His Corpse will be brought 1,300 miles and People will meet up and gather along the Whole way to say Farewell.

This might be of small interest to My sister in Sweden, but it has just happened and my mind is full of it. The Indian savages in Minnesota made an uproar and started a cruel war. But afterwards the Indians were told to keep 20 miles away from any house or white settlement. Now we are safe from the reds.

I want to tell you about my family now since Kristina left us. Her death I have not gotten over and don’t think I will in Life. But otherwise all is well with us, I have had good luck in worldy matters, I have now 3 horses and one colt and 10 cows not counting young ones. Last year I fatted 18 Pigs. I sold most of the Pork, but since the war, prices are low. 20 acres of my claim still lies in wilderness but my Sons will help me break it. My six children are all well and full of Life. My oldest daughter takes care of my house, she is 18. And my good boys will be of great help. The youngest goes to school and is learning English fast.

After the end of the war the Country is improving. They are building one railroad after another through Minnesota and we can all ride the Steam Wagon. Good times are promised to us by our Government.

The Astrakhan tree from Kristina’s home bears every fall. You can see it to the right in the Portrait I send of our House, taken by a photographing man from Stellwater. Now you can see how we live, they take portraits much like the object here in America.

My hope is that my thoughts which I have tried to put on Paper will find you and Yours at good health. Hope you don’t forget to write and let me know about My beloved Sister.

Your Devoted Brother

Karl Oskar Nilsson.