Pioneer Spirit

From: edsitement.neh.gov, k-2 lesson on sod houses -Mr. and Mrs. David Vincent

Pioneer Spirit

I’m just about finished reading O.E. Rolvaag’s “Giants in The Earth” and it gives me a new appreciation for my ancestors. Those sod farmers of the Dakotas came to a land untamed, raw with possibilities, yet packed with unknown disasters. My own ancestors were sod farmers in North Dakota (between Havana and Rutland) in the early 1900’s. The sheer endurance, the formidable strength to carry on that these pioneers had is such a revelation and a witness to the indomitability of the human race. No matter the struggle, we will endure.

My Great aunt Emily Lucy Huckell Fetherhuff writes this poem of her birthplace:

Birthplace

This is the place that gave me birth,

This country home nestled close to earth;

Whose eves in winter reached so low,

Snuggling down to touch the snow

With sparkle and shine the moonlight bright

Crystalized here the dreaming night.

In back were rounded, snow-smoothed hills

Embellished by the green, the tree frills

Marching sedately, dark and tall

Sheltering us with a dense green wall;

Casting it’s shadow, faintly blue,

Making the world look strangely new.

Here I was born on this little farm,

With lamp-lit window cheery and warm.

Here winter carved the snowy land

Firmly with icy sculpture’s hand.

Protected above by the sky’s blue dome

Cherished and loved in my lowly home.

                        ~ Emily Lucy Huckell Fetherhuff

Rolvaag writes of long and bitter winters, with snow so deep they had to shovel themselves out.

I remember a winter like that, perhaps 1956 or ’57. We lived in Lead, South Dakota in a split-level home. Dad went out upstairs and had to shovel the downstairs door open, which had been completely covered.  He dug a trench in the snow from the door, out to the street. Mom said that she could only see the tops of our heads as we kids walked through that tunnel to the street to go to school.

In addition, Rolvaag writes of the locust that came like a cloud from Satan, that devoured their crops and left a seed of squirming, hungry mouths which emerged the next spring.  It seems that living in a dark, sod hut, with a dirt floor, and no more food than you could eat would be a stingy way to live. And let us not get into the discomfort and sacrifice of an outhouse-especially in winter time.

The winter’s cold, summer’s heat, clouds of insects, the constant work just to survive might be too much for the likes of me. I am a weak individual. Yet, my ancestors were strong. And so were a lot of other folks who immigrated, went without, struggled and finally succeeded in making a life on the great midwestern prairie.

Yet, Rolvaag writes that many did not survive. More than anything it was the loneliness that drove folks mad; being in a new and different place, without information; wondering what calamity would befall them next—that was the thing that cut the quickest.  One of Rolvaag’s main characters, Beret (Per Hansa’s wife) was overcome with depression, despair and such madness without which any amount of help could not cure. She did not want to live in a sod hut. She was afraid of the wide-openness of the prairie, of the wide sky and the lack of trees. She could not hear the birds. This surprised me, by the way, because I think the prairies do have birds. Hmm.

[This is an aside] The North Dakota Game and Bird website lists a long variety of grassland birds: Brewer’s, Bard’s and Grasshopper Sparrows, Bobolink, Chestnut-collared Longspur, Greater Prairie Chicken, Greater Sage and Sharp-trail Grouse, Loggerhead Shrike, McCown’s Longspur, Lark Bunting, Dickcissle, Sedge Wren, Meadowlark and Whooping crane. (there are probably more.) So, this begs the question of why Rolvaag wrote that Beret did not hear birds. My only conclusion is that was part of her illness.

My Great aunt Emily also had an illness. She suffered from polio as a child and it left her legs paralyzed. Yet, she always had a smile when I saw her. Other folks noticed that as well and my great, great aunt wrote a poem for (her niece), my great aunt Emily.

Emily

She sat upon the ridge above

A smile upon her face

And I wondered if I could have smiled

Had I been in her place.

Watching her Mom and I

Gathering sea shells in the sand below.

This lovely patient lady

A victim of Polio.

She used to wander o’er the hills

And through the meadows, too.

Her limbs I can remember

Were so strong and true

O’re the fields and country sides she roamed

She waded streamlets, too.

Now ,she sits in her lonely chair

To gaze into the blue.

             ~ Daisy Lambden Wiggins , pg. 20 from Pages From Life.

We are now living in a time of great stress around the world, where food is becoming scarce for many, where poverty gathers on the horizon or comes knocking at our door, where the specter of disease and death are every night touted in the evening news. Many people wonder if they can even go on.

But I ask you, are we, here in America so bad off? I know full well there are folks out there without—without medical care, without housing and without food. Yet, I see the world health organization and many other organizations trying to help folks who are in need. Many, many volunteers around the USA and around the world are seeking out those less fortunate to provide aide.

My own oven is broken, yet we were able to pick up the phone and call for a “contact free” pizza delivered to our very door, to be sent in time for supper. My husband is as capable as Per Hansa and has the needed part ordered—and has the wherewithal to fix it, once the part comes in. I am fortunate, indeed.

After the riots that rocked Minneapolis a few weeks ago, legions of volunteers handed out bags and bags of food to all who came. Many other volunteers found housing for the homeless, donated money, drove the needy, ministered to the needy. Our government has gone trillions (Trillions!) of dollars in debt to keep the proverbial ‘wolf’ from the door of those who have lost jobs, by handing out zero and low interest loans, grants, additional unemployment dollars. Even those folks in Mpls. who (by no fault of their own) find themselves living in tents in the park, have onsite toilets, medicinal and food stuffs available. That is not to say living in a tent in the park is a good thing, but it seems folks today have so many more resources to draw upon than our ancestors did.

Our ancestors did with less, made something out of very little, endured the elements, the loneliness, worked from dawn to dusk and if need be, did without because that was all there was. They were grateful for any resource that arrived, either by their own hard work or by the providence of God. If only I can hang on to that work ethic, hang on to that selflessness, hang on to that gratitude.

“There were giants in the earth in those days, and also after that, when the sons of God came in unto the daughters of men, and they bare children to them, the same became mighty men which were of old, men of renown.” ~Genesis 6:4

Resources:

The Voice in the Wind, Emily Lucy Huckell Fetherhuff, by Ted Hart Publishing, 1983.

Pages From Life, by Daisy Lambden Wiggins, Eagle Publishing Co. LTD, not dates, but printed before 1980.

Giants in The Earth by O.E. Rolvaag, Harper and Row publishers, 1927.

North Dakota Game and Fish at: https://gf.nd.gov/wildlife/id/grassland-birds