The Indians were vain, they decorated themselves with buffalo horns, they greased their hair with bear fat, they smeared red clay over their faces. At times they painted their whole bodies so red they resembled blood-stained butchers; in such things they were childish. But in other ways they were so clever one might take them for magicians; their bows were simple and useless looking — only a piece of skin stretched between the two ends of a broken-off branch — yet their arrows killed game in its tracks; Robert had once seen an Indian shoot a big buck with his bow and arrow. The brownskins’ flint arrows were short, but they sharpened them against a peculiar stone called Indian-stone until their points grew so sharp they would penetrate hide and flesh and shatter bone.
The Indians were childish in another way — they believed dead people could eat and drink; they carried food and drink to the graves of their relatives.
But in one way they were much wiser than the whites: they did not hoe the earth.
Robert had once seen the picture of an Indian girl in a book; she was so beautiful he would have liked to make her his wife, could he have found her. But the young women he had seen here among the Chippewas were almost all ugly: they had short legs, clumsy bodies, broad, square faces with thick noses. The older women had such rough skin that they were almost repulsive. Yet white menfolk were said to desire Indian women. Samuel Nöjd, the fur trapper, had related that in the old days there were French trappers so burning with lust they couldn’t pass a female in the forest. They had raped every Indian woman they encountered, however ugly or old she might be. And this caused them no more concern than shooting an animal.
However, Nöjd said, the trappers had grown less eager to attack Indian women after the Sioux had taken a gruesome revenge on one white man. They had tied him to a pole, and for a whole night they sharpened their knives in front of him, now and then calling out to him: “You may live until our knives are sharp!” At intervals they tested their knives by cutting off a piece of his skin. At daybreak the knives were sharp — and the trapper insane. Then the Indians stuck their well-honed knives into his breast, cutting loose his heart, as slowly as they could, and the man lived a long while with his heart dangling outside him like a big red blossom. This had taken place near the Indian cliff. Later the savages had buried the trapper in the cave called the mouth of the Indian-head. Every day at dawn the trapper’s agonized cries could still be heard, Samuel Nöjd concluded.
The Sioux, who from time to time roamed through these regions, were much more cruel than the Chippewas. But Robert did not avoid the Indians because of their cruelty or their heathenish ways; rather, he admired and esteemed them for their wisdom and their easy way of living. Had he himself been given brown skin instead of white, he would not have been forced either to cut timber in the forest or grub hoe the earth.
— 2—
The night frost grew sharper; each morning the meadow resembled a field of glittering white lilies. An intense storm had in a single day shaken the leaves from the trees, carrying them into the air like clouds of driven snow; afterward the surface of Lake Ki-Chi-Saga shone golden yellow with all the floating leaves from the naked forest on its shores. After the storm came the cold, and land and water were soon frozen hard. On the lake the mirror-clear ice crust thickened each night, and in the ground the frost dug deeper, not to release its hold until spring.
No one could work frozen ground, and Robert put away his grub hoe for the winter. He must now help his brother cut fence rails; in the spring Karl Oskar would fence the part of his land he intended to cultivate, and thousands of rails were needed.
Robert and Arvid visited each other every Sunday; either Robert would walk over to the settlement at Lake Gennesaret, or Arvid would come to Ki-Chi-Saga. Usually they went down to the lake shore, where they made a fire; here the two friends from Sweden could sit undisturbed in intimate talk.
Robert had told Arvid when he first decided to leave his Swedish service and emigrate to North America. Now he again had a secret of a similar nature, and Arvid was the only one he confided in. One frosty Sunday, as they sat feeding their fire on the lake shore, he began: “Can you keep your mouth shut?”
“I never say anything. You can rely on me.”
“I carry a great secret — no one knows it; I’m going to run away from here as soon as I can.”
Arvid was astonished: “What’s that you say? You want to leave your brother?”
“Karl Oskar is not my master.”
“I thought you two brothers would stay together.”
“I shall travel far away and dig gold.”
“Dig up gold? The hell you will! And you haven’t told anyone?”
“Such a plan must be kept secret.”
Robert explained: It wasn’t that his brother treated him badly, Karl Oskar neither kicked nor hit him; but the work was no different from the drudgery he had endured while a hired hand in Sweden; it was equally depressing and heavy; the days dragged along with the same monotony. He could not stand it much longer, he had never wanted to be a day laborer, he knew a shorter way to riches, and here in America no one could stop him from traveling wherever he wished.
“Do you know where the gold lies?” Arvid asked.
“Yes. In California. Farthest away to the west.”
“Is California a — a broad land?”
“Broader than Minnesota.”
“Do you know the exact place? I mean, where the gold lies?”
“No. I’ll have to look and ask my way, I guess.”
“Is the gold spread all over? Or is it in one place?”
“It’s spread all over.”
Arvid thought about this for a while, then he said: Gold was supposed to glitter, it should be easy to see it, if one looked sharp. But if California was bigger than Minnesota, and if the gold was spread all over that broad country, then Robert might have a troublesome, long-drawn-out journey before he found it; he would have to walk over the whole country and look everywhere.
Robert realized that Arvid did not know anything about the gold land; he had only heard the name. He must explain to his friend about that country, since he wished to share his plans for the future with Arvid.
And so Robert began a simple explanation of California. He told Arvid all he had read and heard, besides much he had neither read nor heard but which he knew must be so, without exactly knowing how he knew it. And perhaps the things he knew in this way were the most important.
In California the valuable metal called gold was almost as common as wood in Minnesota. Gold was used for all kinds of tools, implements, and furniture, because it was cheaper than iron or wood. Rich people used gold chamber pots. The gold grew in that country on fields called gold fields. It grew quite near the surface. Only a light hoe was needed to reach it, not a heavy ten-pound grub hoe such as he labored with here. In some places no hoe at all was required — there were those who had dug up as much as fifty thousand dollars’ worth of gold with a tablespoon. The only tool needed was a wooden bowl in which to wash the gold to remove the dirt. And if you couldn’t afford a bowl, you might wash the gold in your hat; an old, worn-out hat was all one needed to gather a fortune. And when the gold had been washed clean of earth and other dirt, until it shone and glittered according to its nature, one had only to put it in a skin pouch and carry it to the bank, and then return to withdraw the interest each month. All gold pickers with good sense did this; the others squandered their gold in gambling dens, or ruined themselves with whores.