The Pioneer Mothers And Their Part In The Struggle
What we have said of the pioneers so far has reflected for the most part what the pioneer fathers said, did or thought. If any one should get the impression from this seemingly one-sided treatment that pioneer mothers bore any lesser part of the burdens and sacrifices incident to leaving the land of their birth, and beginning all over again the long struggle of re-establishing themselves, and that, too, on the bare prairie where there was absolutely nothing to begin with, such a one has been greatly misled. While the work, not to speak of the privations and feelings of our mothers, is more difficult to record on paper, it is not one whit less real or deserving of any less appreciation. We can only give a few outlines picturing their part of the life. Yet if any one has a little imagination he can easily fill in the picture with its various tints and shades. The shadows were often both deep and tragic.
For a woman, even more than for a man, the social ties of life mean a great deal. Our mothers left their home relations, kindred and neighbors close around them, to be set down on a lonely prairie, cut off from all the dear relationships of childhood and womanhood. Even where there were neighbors, or soon came to be, they were at first strangers and often spoke a strange tongue. So for them there were many long days and weary years of isolation and heart hunger for those whom they had known and loved long ago, but now could never again see.
Then, too, they had left homes, some of them very comfortable homes, where they had always had the necessary equipment for ordinary housekeeping. Here for years they had to do with little and in many lines nothing. The average newcomer's larder from which our mothers had to get the materials for three meals a day was generally confined to these articles: Corn meal with more or less of wheat flour, often less, and not seldom none at all; fat salt pork, at least part of the time; milk in considerable quantity both for cooking, drinking in place of tea or coffee and for making a number of dishes made almost exclusively from milk. Butter they generally had, but as that was about the only thing they had to sell it had to be conserved and lard or a mixture of lard and molasses used instead. There were eggs, or came to be, but while used more or less, they, too, had to go toward getting such few groceries as could be afforded. These were coffee, sugar, a little kerosene for one small lamp, and last, but, for many of the men, not least—tobacco. Now let no pink tea scion or descendant of these men who had to be the breaking plows of our new state, hold up lilly fingered hands of horror at this last and often not least item in the grocery list of that day. For if you are a man child of this stock and you had been there and then, with all the physical discomforts of the climate, lack of suitable clothes and food, not to speak of the frequently loathsome drinking water, you might have felt justified in the use of a nerve sedative too. It shall be said to their credit, too, that while most of the men of that day used the weed, few of them used it in such beastly excess as is often seen today. But rightly or wrongly, they thought they had to have it. Thus Lars Almen, when he arrived at Yankton, had 50 cents in money left. He started to invest that last mite of the family resources in tobacco. His wife remonstrated, saying it would be more fitting to get a few provisions such as they could all partake of. The ever undaunted Lars replied: "If I have tobacco I know I can do something or other to make us a living, but if I have no tobacco I can do nothing". So he bought tobacco, and he also made good on the "living." Forgetting, then, the last named item in on the list of staple provisions, we find that salt pork, usually fried, corn meal in some form, such as mush or bread, more or less of wheat flour and milk or some dish made out of milk in whole or part, were the resources out of which our pioneer mothers had to provide three palatable meals a day, summer and winter. This is not saying that these materials were always abundant, but rather that it was these or nothing. There were, of course, special occasions when a little pastry in the shape of home made cookies or fried cakes was on the table, but cake and pie and such like luxuries were not often seen the first years.
The fuel with which to prepare this food was, for most of them, hay, or in summer cow chips, and later on, when they began to raise corn, corn cobs. But hay was the principal fuel, and huge piles of it were required to do much cooking or for heating. For, as can be readily seen, one had to keep stuffing it into the stove almost continually to get any hot fire. Picture to yourself then a room—sod house, dugout or a frame house about 12 × 14 which was kitchen, sitting room, bedroom, and everything else combined. The hay, as was the case in winter time, would cover a large part of the floor and, of course, raise continual dust. The stove would get full of ashes in a short time, and if the hay was damp would, of course, smoke more or less. In such a place, with such conveniences and out of such materials, our pioneer mothers had to solve the problem of three meals a day and do all their other work besides. In summer, of course, it was not quite so bad, as they usually had a lean to or cook shanty of some sort, for use in warm weather. Is it strange that many of these women who came to find a new and, as they supposed, a better home, found instead an early grave, and what was worse, some even lost their minds? The men could get away, at least to be outdoors a part of the time, but the women had to live and move and have their whole being in these surroundings and conditions. So let us not fail to speak the word of appreciation to those of them who are still living or to cherish the memory of those who have made their final pilgrimage. So let there be flowers and kind words for the living and flowers and tears for the dead. For our pioneer mothers gave more for us than we can ever know.