The Settlers (58 page)

“Should we keep the schoolmaster?”

Mr. Johnson did drink in excess, said the pastor, but there was no evidence that his lamentable weakness had made him neglect his duties. During this first year he had taught the children well. They would probably not be able to find a teacher of Johnson’s ability to replace him. The salary was not high enough to attract a graduate teacher from Sweden. As long as the teacher’s drinking did not hurt the children, Pastor Törner thought they ought to keep him on.

The Swedish teacher was no longer a young man, and the pastor had spoken seriously to him and made him promise not to take any whiskey until after school hours. Then he would have a whole night to sober up before his next day of teaching. He hoped Mr. Johnson would keep his promise.

For his three children of school age—Johan, Marta, and Harald—Karl Oskar paid the teacher three dollars a month. Next spring when Dan—their first little American—began school, Karl Oskar would have to pay four dollars a month.

He said that Mr. Johnson had a good head, but it was too bad he spent his salary for drinks, which undermined and ruined a person, body and soul. Among the settlers they had an example to warn them: Anders Månsson of Taylors Falls. He had several times this last summer come drunk to church.

Yet Pastor Törner felt that less drinking took place among the Chisago settlers than in other new settlements. And concerning morality, during his time among them only two illegitimate children had been born, both of whom had been begotten in other Swedish settlements.

Pastor Törner praised the delicious goose several times, and Kristina guessed that God himself must have directed the bird in front of Karl Oskar’s gun yesterday to give her this opportunity to treat their pastor to a farewell dinner.

After the meal, coffee was served, and Pastor Törner distributed gifts to each one of the six children. Happiest of all was Harald, who received a Swedish book—
First Reader for Beginners
—which the pastor had sent for from the old country. The pastor had instructed Harald for a few months and he remembered what a good head the boy had.

“He reads Swedish like a minister!” said the mother proudly. “As soon as he has read a piece once he can repeat it by heart!”

The father added that they had sent for the
Little Catechism
from
Hemlandet
and the boy had learned it by heart in a few evenings. And when he found anything printed in English he read it as well as an American.

Pastor Törner looked from Harald to Karl Oskar.

“Of all your children, this one particularly takes after his father.”

“You mean he has my nose!” smiled the settler.

“His nose is assuredly the most apparent likeness!”

Harald was the only one among the children who had inherited the Nilsa-nose, this enormous rutabaga that disfigured Karl Oskar’s face. But there was a belief in the family that its bearer would have luck in life. When the children teased Harald because of his nose, Karl Oskar would comfort him by saying: “Remember that your father’s nose was the best luck he ever had!”

And now the father said to the pastor that he hoped Harald would propagate this rutabaga in his own children, and to their children and children’s children, so that the big nose, a hundred years from now, might decorate a great many American faces as a living memorial to the Nilsa family. In that way, perhaps, he would set his mark on America.

—2—

The new-timbered Swedish church had been built in the spacious oak grove on the peninsula opposite Nordberg’s Island, a mile and a half from Karl Oskar’s place. From the center of the roof a steeple had been raised whose ever-narrowing timbers rose upward fully thirty feet toward the sky. The builders had gone to a great deal of trouble with this spire, the timbers carefully hewn and planed, but now, seen from the ground, it looked as if it were made of ordinary fence posts. Thirty feet seemed to diminish into a puny distance up there; it was but a snail’s pace on the road to the firmament vaulting so high above their new church. From the ground, thirty feet seemed like a pitiful attempt at a steeple. But none of the builders had raised a church before, none had put up a spire over a Lord’s house. And God must realize that these were awkward builders who had raised his church at the old Indian lake, and therefore God must be forbearing. But in any case this was the first Lutheran church in the St. Croix Valley, and even if the steeple rose only thirty feet into the air it pointed the way to the Lord’s heaven.

Even though services were being conducted in the new church it was far from finished inside. There were only a few pews and most of the participants must stand during the sermons; church bell and organ were missing, for the parish was short of cash. Concerning the color of the exterior paint for the building, a long-drawn-out argument had arisen among the parishioners.

Three different groups each wanted a different color for the new Swedish church. The first group wanted the church washed red to remind them of Christ’s blood and wounds which had redeemed Man from eternal condemnation and effected atonement with God. The second group wanted to see the temple walls green as grass, the color of sweet hope, leading their thoughts to the eternal joy of heaven, helping them to find comfort in the Father. Finally, the third group wanted to paint the church white, the color of purity, innocence, and angels’ wings. This would always remind them of Christ’s saying: Even though your sins be blood-red they shall be washed as white as snow.

For a year and a half the arguments had gone on among the reds, greens, and whites. Many stormy meetings were held, long speeches and heated arguments were heard. Pastor Törner regretted this disunity but he himself took no definite stand. He tried to calm the stirred-up emotions by pointing out that their salvation in no way was dependent on the color of their church. In the end the third group gained a majority, mainly because the parish business manager, Petrus Olausson, was the leader of that group. Consequently the new church had been painted white.

Later, a rumor had it that Olausson, long before the strife began, had happened to buy a large quantity of white paint.

“The settlers fight about any little thing,” exclaimed Kristina. “The Swedes are hopeless that way!”

“We must follow the American order of things,” said Karl Oskar. He approved of that order, however cumbersome and time-consuming it might be to make many heads agree. At least here they ran their own church without interference from high lords. What did the congregation have to say when churches were built in Sweden? The bishop decided almost everything. And Ljuder parish was run by three or four mighty men. Here three or four hundred people took part and made decisions about their parish and their church. It might take more time, but individuals should have the right to put their fingers in their own pies.

As a member of the parish council, Karl Oskar had suggested the erection of a lightning rod as a protection for the new church; since it was built of wood it could easily burn should lightning strike it. Long ago in Sweden, his meadow barn, filled with hay, had been destroyed by lightning fire; he had never forgotten it. In this country lightning seemed to be more frequent and of greater intensity than in Sweden, and he had put up lightning rods on both his main house and barn. It would be very simple to have a similar protective rod for the church. A copper wire would follow the side of the steeple down and into the ground; if lightning should strike, it would run along that wire and disappear into the earth.

Petrus Olausson was immediately against Karl Oskar. To put up a lightning rod on the church would be to show disrespect and suspicion toward God. A person who failed to believe that the Lord would be capable of averting lightning from his temple and would rather trust a copper wire, such a person could not be a faithful Christian. A true Lutheran must trust God, not a copper wire. If they put up a lightning rod they would commit the grave sin of weak faith. They should trust in the Almighty himself to protect the church they had built for him.

Karl Oskar replied: Was a person then not to use the protective remedies invented? That meant one couldn’t use warm clothing against the cold. Nor could a person swim to shore if he happened to fall into the lake. It meant they could not harvest their crops in the fall but must starve during the winter. If this were the Lutheran religion, then he was no true Lutheran.

“Yes, we know,” agreed Olausson with sad finality. “You and your wife harbor sectarians and evil preachers in your house. The soul fiend has put it into your head to use the lightning rod in an attempt to make us give up the true religion. When the devil wants to snare a person, a thin copper wire is quite sufficient.”

Olausson thus having raised a doubt in the mind of other council members concerning Karl Oskar’s religious beliefs, one by one they refused to vote for his motion. Only Jonas Petter stood by him. Because Karl Oskar and Kristina still opened their door to the wife of the Baptist minister in Stillwater, no lightning rod was erected for the new church. The parish left it to the Lord to protect his temple against lightning.

There was still much disorder and confusion in the Swedish Lutheran parish in Chisago Township. There were members without any respect for the church’s holiness, who acted within its walls as though it were a worldly house. Who could rebuke the impudent and shameless since no one had a right to give orders? The pastor himself was hired by the parish as its servant. At last it was agreed that vulgar behavior in the church would be punished with fines. To avoid hurting anyone’s feelings it was called a tax, a nuisance tax. If anyone brought dogs into the church during the service he must pay a dollar for each animal. A gun was allowed if put in the corner, but dogs were not suffered since they disturbed the service by growls and barking. If one entered the temple with dirty boots and made marks on the floor he paid fifty cents for this offense. But most expensive of all was to come drunk to the service: this was taxed at two dollars. It was difficult to decide when someone was to be considered drunk; if one was quiet and orderly he need not pay this so-called nuisance tax, however much whiskey he had consumed. But if anyone raised his voice in talk or laughter, or interrupted the minister at the altar or in the pulpit, it was considered a two-dollar sin.

During the first year the nuisance tax was in effect, it brought the parish forty-five dollars. This money was kept in a special savings box; in time it would be used for the purchase of a church bell. Thus evil was turned into good: the more disorder in the church, the sooner church bells would peal for the Swedish settlers at Chisago Lake.

—3—

The colony grew with each year’s immigration. The newcomers were mostly relatives and friends of earlier arrivals, lured here by the description of the fertile country. They would arrive during the spring and summer and their log cabins would be built by fall. The immigrants came from various countries, but the majority were Swedes. In Chisago Township there were now five hundred Swedes, and fifteen hundred in the whole valley: a good-sized parish had moved from Sweden to the St. Croix Valley.

The settlements sprang up ever closer to the new church. On the peninsula opposite Nordberg’s Island, that had been named for the first landseeker at this lake, a new town site had been surveyed and named Center City. It was a rather boastful name but the settlers felt the town would in time live up to it. The site was at the center of the settlement and was planned to become the county seat of Chisago County.

A group of houses rose quickly in Center City. A few enterprising Swedes built a sawmill and a flour mill, both run by steam. The settlers need no longer drive long and difficult roads to have their timber sawed or their grain milled. An Irishman opened a lodging house where travelers could sleep and obtain food; a German wagon-maker built a shop with a lathe and other machinery. An American opened a tailor shop, a Norwegian blacksmith arrived with his tools. The Chisago people could now obtain clothing and implements near home.

One day the Nilssons heard that a young Swede had opened a general store in Center City.

The first time Karl Oskar went into the store he thought today he wouldn’t have to use English to make his purchases. The store was so recently built and opened that piles of shavings still lay in the corners. Counter and shelves had not yet been painted, and there was a smell of pitch from newly sawed pine boards. From the ceiling hung a number of implements, harnesses, lanterns, coils of rope, and other objects, but most of the shelves were still bare.

Behind the counter stood a young man with a firm, narrow face and open, light-blue eyes. His blond hair was cut short and neatly combed. No one need ask in what country the new storekeeper had been born: his boots of thick, greased Småland leather alone gave Karl Oskar the information.

He greeted the man in his native tongue and was about to tell him who he was when the young man behind the counter said, “You must be Karl Oskar from Korpamoen?”

If the store ceiling had fallen on his head, Karl Oskar could not have been more surprised. The new storekeeper not only used the Ljuder dialect, he also spoke to Karl Oskar as if his name had been in daily use at home.

“Why—yes! But how in all the world . . .”

“I’m Klas Albert Persson from Ljuder. My father was Churchwarden Per Persson of Åkerby.”

“You must be his youngest boy?”

“I am.”

“Well!”

Karl Oskar stared in disbelief at the younger man who was claiming that they were from the same parish in Sweden. And indeed, his ears testified to the fact that the young man spoke the Ljuder dialect.

“You certainly surprised me. I hadn’t expected one from home to be the new store owner.”

“I came to America three years ago,” said Klas Albert. “I’ve worked recently in a store in St. Paul.”

Klas Albert—yes, Karl Oskar remembered the boy, who had been of confirmation age when he himself emigrated; now he looked to be in his early twenties. He remembered him as a boy in Sweden; now he saw him as a grown man in America. In Klas Albert’s change he could measure the time he himself had been out here: enough for a boy to grow into manhood.