But all the steerage passengers on the Red Wing, whatever their language, were as poor as he, and all wanted to get rich.
Robert’s purpose in coming to America was perhaps best expressed in a song which he had heard from the crew’s quarters many evenings. Their voices could be heard from their place of gathering on their own deck, where he could see their half-naked bodies in the semidarkness. At first he had only been able to understand one word of their song—free. But after listening for a few days he could interpret the whole meaning:
We will be free, we will be free,
As the wind of the earth and the waves of the sea. .
This was the crew’s song in the evening, it was the song of the wandering river, it was the song of Robert’s aim in America.
— 3—
From the deck of the Red Wing Robert and Arvid saw a constant change of scenery: the shores, the river itself, the many passing steamers with strange names, logs floating along on the current, pieces of lumber, bushes, trees, boxes, barrels, dead birds. Once they saw a corpse sail by, only part of the head sticking out of the water, a gray-white face and black hair entangled in a mass of green grass and branches; they thought it was the corpse of a woman, floating along with this unusual bridal wreath on her head.
They watched for new trees and plants along the shores, for Arvid had heard that shirts and pants grew on trees in America, and he wanted to see these trees. Robert said he must have in mind the cotton bush which grew only in the Southern states; they would not see it here.
Robert was looking for crocodiles; he had read in his book that these monsters inhabited the Mississippi. And one day Arvid pointed out an animal, swimming near the shore, so ugly that the like of it he had never seen before; it must be a crocodile. But the captain assured them that crocodiles didn’t swim this far north, and the ones in the swamplands near the river mouth weren’t really crocodiles, they were alligators.
One night an immigrant from Scotland, sleeping on the deck, fell into the river. No one missed him until morning. He left a wife and six small children on the boat. A collection was taken up among the passengers for the destitute family, and each one contributed something. In all, more than thirty dollars was collected as comfort and aid to the fatherless family; but the widow and her six children continued to weep just the same.
Arvid was horrified at the thought of the Scotsman; not only did the poor man lose his life, if his body floated toward the sea, he might be eaten by the gruesome crocodiles. How could he, on the Day of Doom, rise up from the stomach of a crocodile?
One morning Arvid called to Robert in consternation: “Look over there! The wild critters have come!”
On a cliff overlooking the river stood a group of strangely immobile figures, all facing the steamer, which passed them at a distance not above a gunshot. Feathers on their heads indicated they were Indians; some had bows in their hands. All watched the steamer intently, its funnels spewing smoke, its wheels rolling along through the water, splashing like large fins. The Indians stood like trees grown out of the rock, petrified by the sight of the steamer.
Undoubtedly these were wild Indians, Robert said.
Several times during their journey inland they had seen Indians, but they had been civilized. Now, for the first time, they saw wild Indians, Indians in the bush. And Robert understood that the immigrants were now approaching the vast, unknown, dangerous wilderness, a much larger and much more dangerous wilderness than they had traveled through before.
“They might shoot arrows at us!” Arvid said, looking for a place to hide.
But the Indians remained like statues, straight and silent, intently watching the puffing, pushing steamer on the river.
Suddenly the stillness was broken by the Red Wing’s steam whisde; a piercing sound reverberated across the water, echoing back from the cliffs on shore. The sound cut like a lance in Robert’s ear.
The Indians answered the whistle with a shriek of terror and disappeared from their cliff as quickly as if swept away by the wind; quicker almost than the eye could see, they had run and hidden behind bushes at the foot of the cliff. The two boys had never seen human beings so swift of foot. The highly entertained passengers on the upper deck laughed heartily.
Arvid was much surprised: he had heard that the Indians were cruel and horrible as wolves. How could they be dangerous when that litde boat whistle could scare them away? And now he knew what he would do if encountering wild Indians in the forest: he would whistle; then they would scatter like chickens from a hawk.
Robert thought that perhaps these Indians had never before seen a steamer. At home people said steamers were Satan himself traveling about on water in these latter days, spurting fire and smoke. The heathens out here could hardly be expected to have more sense than Christians in Sweden. Perhaps they thought the steamer was an evil monster risen from the depths of the river. They might be familiar with crocodiles, sea serpents, and other river creatures, but had they ever seen an animal spewing smoke, sparks, and fire? Were they accustomed to roaring river creatures, paddling along with wheel-feet, shrieking like a thousand pigs simultaneously stuck with sharp knives? Robert’s own ears could not stand the sound of the whistle, and Arvid had said that his heart had stopped inside his breast for many minutes when he heard the whisde for the first time. Robert was sure that a sound like the steam whistle had never before been heard on God’s earth.
And he thought it was an evil deed to let loose the whistle in order to frighten the Indians and entertain the passengers. It was true that the Indians were heathen and unchristian, but there was no need to plague them unnecessarily.
Robert had read about the Indians shooting with poisoned arrows and killing people with dull wooden spears. He had even heard that they scalped people without sharpening their knives, a thought which made him shudder so that his hair stood on end. Such were the deeds of unchristian people who were neither baptized nor confirmed; heathens knew no better. This would change as soon as they became civilized and Christian. When the missionaries arrived among the Indians and baptized them and gave them the Lord’s Supper, the one-time wild Indians would learn to use their enemies’ breech-loading guns and scalp their victims with sharp knives.
The captain said: “The Indians are horrible people; they tie their captives to poles and burn them to death; they fry them the way Christian people fry pork.”
And Robert appreciated this warning. He had now actually glimpsed the natives of this unknown wilderness where he and his group were about to build their homes. They would soon reach their destination; a new, strange life would soon begin. And the life awaiting them began to take shape in his imagination.
Each day Robert carefully observed the new country, its natives, plants, animals, general appearance. Sometime in the future, when he had leisure and writing implements, he intended to write a description of his surroundings according to his own observations. He possessed a small writing book, once given to him by Schoolmaster Rinaldo, in which he had put down the most unusual happenings so far.