Some Pioneers and Pilgrims on the Prairies of Dakota / Or, From the Ox Team to the Aeroplane

by John B. Reese; H. B. Reese

CHAPTER VI[ToC]

The Great Immigration of 1880—Cause of

If a man had stood by the king's highway leading from Opdal, Norway, to the seaport town of Trondhjem, in the month of April, 1880, he could have witnessed a strange and significant scene. Here comes a procession of twenty or more sleds, each drawn by a single small horse. The sleds were heavily loaded with large, blue-tinted chests, as also trunks, satchels and numerous smaller articles of household and family use. Riding on top of these loads are mothers with little children as also a number of grandmothers, the latter upwards of seventy years of age. A number of lighter sleds, or cutters, are also in the procession. These belong to friends of this pilgrim procession, who are accompanying them part way and are now about to say, or have already said, their final farewell and Godspeed to these pilgrims—their friends and relations. This may explain in part the fact that the men walk by the side of their loads in silence, with downcast eyes and a lump in their throats, while the women show clear traces of recent tears. Nor can we blame them for succumbing for the moment to their emotions when we come to understand the meaning of this strange scene.

These people, about sixty in number, this day were leaving that spot on God's earth most dear to them; leaving the birthplace and the resting-place of a hundred generations of their ancestors, they were looking for the last time on their former homes and on the dear familiar spots so well known from their childhood. They had just looked for the last time upon the faces of their friends and near relatives and spoken the last words, and soon they were to see the receding outlines of the mountain peaks of their beloved fatherland, nevermore to see them again. For they were on the way to America, and America was very far off in those days, and to most people going there the way back was forever closed. So to these people these last glimpses and handshakes and words were the final, as far as this world went, and they were all too well aware of it.

But let us pause in the journey at this point, while still under the influence of the nearby majestic mountains, robed in evergreen and crowned with the snows of generations, so as to get acquainted with the individuals of this company and also to learn the causes which could lead these people to an undertaking so fraught with momentous destiny for all of them and for their descendants to the end of time. As we have already surmised, these people were not light-minded adventurers or people who had nothing to risk or lose. On the contrary, they were deeply rooted where they were and they did not pluck up their life by the roots to be transplanted in a far-off, unknown soil without careful consideration and a great motive.

First we meet Berhaug Rise (later written Reese) who seems to be a leader in this particular group we have before us. He is a man of about forty-five, of spare build and medium height. He has a family consisting of wife and five children—four boys and one girl; also his mother who is nearly seventy years of age. The children's names were Ole, eleven years; Halvor, nine; John, coming seven; Sivert, five; and Mary, three years, and named after the grandmother.

Next we get acquainted with Halvor Hevle, a man also of about forty-five, but because of a terrible affliction of rheumatism, was bent over so that his face is toward the ground. He is accompanied by his wife, Marit, but they have no children.

Then there is Thore Fossem with his wife, his mother and one little girl, Marie, named after the grandmother. It should be explained here that while this last named family was not present in the above group just at this point of the story but came a little later, yet because Mr. Fossem belongs by every other circumstance to this group, and in spiritual kinship and motive particularly with the above two, we include him here. With Thore Fossem came Ingebricht Satrum with one of his boys, I believe, but most of his family came over a year or two later.

The above three men had all been owners of small or medium sized farms and had advanced money for transportation to most of the others in the party from the recent sale of their properties. The remainder of the party, as we shall see, was largely composed of middle aged tradesmen, young unattached men and girls, practically all of them without means of their own to make the long journey. Most of these middle aged men of trades had left large families behind and expected to earn enough money in the new land to repay their own passage and also to send for their families as soon as possible. But more of this later, for the when and the how of the repayment of some of these transportations would be out of place here, tho not without some very interesting features.