Part 6 (1/2)
Those who were left by 1900 had gotten their second wind, as it were, having learned to adapt themselves to the country and were getting a start in cattle.
The big fire referred to above, sweeping over the section in '99 and destroying many of the vacated buildings, as also the remnants of orchards and groves, completed the wiping out of the visible monuments of the first settlers, so the country was nearly back again to the primitive conditions in the early years of 1900.
It was at this time (1904) that we decided to remove from Charles Mix county to Jerauld and the vicinity just described. To move such a distance overland with all one's belongings, including cattle, as also a family in which were several small children, and in the treacherous month of March, was no joy ride for any one concerned. After looking about for a partner in this difficult enterprise, I finally made arrangements with one, Knut Lien, to join me. He had about 40 head of cattle and was a single man. I took with me about 60 head, so on a morning in the early spring of 1904 my partner and I started with our first loads for the land of wide and roomy pasture if not of still waters. On the evening of the second day we stopped in front of the old house on my brother's place, which was to be our future home. But the situation which met us was not especially encouraging to tired, cold and hungry men. The window lights were broken; the floor, too, the house having been used for a granary, had given way. There was no shelter for our horses and, worst of all, not a drop of water on the place.
I was, indeed, discouraged at the outlook and said to Knut: ”We will not unload. We shall rest until morning and then return.” He made no reply, and after doing what we could for our horses we lay down on the floor to get what rest we could.
However, the next day the sun shone, and with the suns.h.i.+ne came renewed courage. We put some supports under the floor and unloaded our goods into the house. Then we went on to the springs for lumber and soon had a shed built to shelter the horses. But the lack of water was the worst of our needs and could not quickly be met. An artesian well had been put down the year before in antic.i.p.ation of our moving, but it did not furnish any water even with a pump and wind mill. The shallow wells on the place, too, were dry. It became evident to us why the people who had preceded us in these parts had left the country.
However, having severed our connections where we had been living, and with our cattle to dispose of somehow, there seemed nothing to do but to go forward. So I returned to Bloomington, and hiring a man to help us, we started, now with all our belongings, for the new home. On the evening of the third day, or April 17th, 1904, we reached Crow Lake.
We, ourselves, as well as the cattle, were very tired, so we camped there for the night, the family having gone on previously to the house we were to move into.
That night a snow and sleet storm broke upon us, lasting all of the next day. With no hay and worn out from the trip, the cattle began to succ.u.mb. Two were left on the place, nine died during the five or six miles which remained of the way, and still five more after arriving at our destination. Those which survived were so exhausted that it took them most of that summer to recover.
This, then, was our first taste of the new land, and it seemed at the time just a little bitter. My cattle dead or nearly so; nothing to do with; everything to be done.
However, during that spring we managed to get a new well sunk, 1260 feet deep, costing $650.00. I also put in 15 acres of wheat and 18 of barley with 90 acres of corn. Fortunately we got a good crop that year, which we also greatly needed.
At first it seemed rather isolated in those days. There were sometimes a couple of weeks in which we did not see a human being outside of our own family. The distance to Mr. Smith, our nearest neighbor to the north, was three miles. To the south, four miles, were Will Hughes and Will Horsten and also the Rendels. Then there was Mr. Gaffin and two or three others southwest of his place. So there was room and to spare between neighbors in those days and for some time following.
From this small beginning has now grown up a fine neighborhood with a good community church and congregation; rural mail delivery; phones; modern homes, and good roads. Among those who have helped build this splendid community should be mentioned besides those above, the Moen families, the Aalbus; the f.a.gerhaugs--Iver and Arnt; the Stolen brothers--Emericht, Olalf, and Martin; Vognild brothers; Bjorlos; Bjerkagers; Petersons, and others. It is a matter of just pride that out of this little group above mentioned, no less than seven young men served in the Great War. These were Reuben Peterson, Martin Peterson, Hugo Peterson, Ole Sneve, Martin Stolen, William Linsted, and Roy Goffin. Two of these--Reuben Peterson and Ole Sneve--were at the ”front” for months and went thru some of the bloodiest battles of the War.--_Editor._
CHAPTER XVIII
LOOKING DOWN THE TRAIL TO THE YEARS AHEAD
We have followed the trail of the first immigrants for more than half a century, from the time they left the old home until they have become an integral part of the life of the new home of their adoption. So marvelous has this experience been that to many it must seem almost like a dream or fairy tale. They came out of a land of poverty and hampering restrictions, social, political and religious. They found an opportunity to attain a comfortable living and a chance to help at the big job of working out a democracy. They came strangers to a strange land, they have already come to share in every position of trust and honor in the new land, with the exception of the presidency, including a number of governors. They came out a comparatively small company; they have become a mult.i.tude, there being already in this country more people of Norse extraction than the whole population of the mother country.
As we look around us among the particular groups here described, and see that the fourth generation from the pioneers is already coming on, the thought comes to us: ”What of these people and their descendants a hundred years from now?”
As I, in vision and imagination, put my ears to the ground of present prophetic facts and tendencies, I hear the distant tramp of great mult.i.tudes out of the oncoming generations. Who are these mult.i.tudes which no man can number? They are the sons and daughters of the immigrant, tho outwardly indistinguishable from the Mayflower product which, too, are the descendants of immigrants. But while the Norse or Scandinavian immigrant is more quickly amalgamated in the sense of taking on all the outward colorings of his new environment than any other nationality, what, if any, will be his distinctive impress upon, or contribution to, the life he has come to share?
As there has been, and is, much foolish talk, malicious misrepresentation and manufactured-to-order hysterics about the ”menace of the immigrant”, on the part of pink-tea patriots and that whole breed of parasites who feed and fatten on stirring up and keeping alive cla.s.s prejudice and hatred, I want to turn on the light here and now, the light of truth and facts.
In the first place, then, I wish to call the attention of these self const.i.tuted, Simon-pure and, in their own estimation, only Americans, to the fact that there is not in itself any disparagement to a man to be an immigrant or descendant of one. Did they ever read about the Pilgrim Fathers, George Was.h.i.+ngton, Ben Franklin or Abraham Lincoln?
Well, these and mult.i.tudes of others they might read about were all ”immigrants” or descendants of immigrants; not only that, but our self-appointed detractor of the immigrant is the descendant of immigrants--unless he or she is an Indian--and even the Indians are immigrants only of an earlier date.
In the second place, while the immigrant should ever be mindful, and in most cases is, of what the new land has offered him in opportunity, yet be it remembered also that, as far as the ”natives” around him are concerned, he has given them immeasurably more than they have given him. He has done the great bulk of the rough, hard work of the mine, forest, factory and of subduing the untamed soil, and without him there would have been far fewer soft-handed jobs for his critics and far fewer of the comforts of life and developments of the country for all the people to enjoy. He has built the railroads, literally by the sweat of his brow, while the superior ”native” manipulated them, watered their stocks and rode on them, finding that part of the enterprise more comfortable and profitable. But unless the ”foreigner”
had been willing to wield the shovel and lay the rails as well as roll them out red hot in the mill, where would the ”American” have had a chance to s.h.i.+ne in the deal?
Again, we are told that the immigrant comes here ignorant and without ideals and standards of life which would make him a safe member of a democracy. Of course, like most broad generalizations, this has a grain of truth when applied to some of the present influx from southern Europe. But when applied to immigrants generally, and especially to the cla.s.s we have here described, the above judgment is just about the exact opposite of the truth. The illiteracy of the Norse immigrant is far less than that of the land of his adoption, in fact, practically negligible, and far less than that of any other cla.s.s of immigrants. As for ideals of life and standards of morality, the immigrant was generally deeply shocked, on arriving here, at the lawlessness, profanity, sordidness, cra.s.s materialism and G.o.dlessness prevalent among the people around him who called themselves Americans.
And speaking of ”ideals” he came here in most instances because of his ideals of freedom--religious, political and economic; to have a chance to live out and express these ideals. They built schools and churches while many of them themselves lived in sod houses or dugouts. Their sons and daughters are found in every college and university of the Northwest and out of all proportion to their rank in the total population. They more than take their share in the four learned professions of teaching, medicine, the ministry and the law. In other words, he came for the very same reason that the first immigrants, or Pilgrim Fathers came--to find room for his growing ideals, as already shown in this narrative. Then, of course, like them, he also came to better himself economically thru realizing certain ideals of equality of opportunity which he had come to cherish in his home land.
Some time ago, Sinclair Lewis, the noted author, speaking on this subject, said:
”I chose 'Carl Erikson' as the hero, protagonist, whatever you call him, of the 'Trail of the Hawk' because he is a typical young American. Your second or third generation Scandinavian is the best type of American. *** They are the New Yankees, these Scandinavians of Minnesota, Wisconsin and the Dakotas. They have mastered politics and vote for honesty, rather than handshakes. **** They send their children thru school. They acc.u.mulate land, one section, two sections, or move into town and become Methodists and Congregationalists, and are neighborly. *** And in a generation, thanks to our flag-decked public schools, they are overwhelmingly American in tradition.”
”Boston, Dec. 16. President Charles W. Elliot, who in an address before the Economic Club of this city has declared in favor of an unrestricted immigration and proclaimed the ability of this country to 'digest' the newcomers of every religion, education and nationality, has been at the head of Harvard University since 1869, was a graduate of that inst.i.tution in the cla.s.s of 1853, and holds the degree of LL.D. from Williams, Princeton and Yale. He is considered one of the highest living authorities in his specialty of chemistry and has written many scientific works.”
Permit me to offer a word of caution in this connection regarding certain tendencies and att.i.tudes toward the immigrant which are working just the opposite result from what is intended.