The Last Letter Home, Vol. 4 Book

They changed the land - and the land changed them.

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Vilhelm Moberg (1898-1973) is considered the greatest Swedish writer of the 20th century and is best known for his four novels about a group of Swedish settlers who emigrated to America in 1850. These emigrants were among the almost million Swedish people, including a number of Moberg's relatives, who left their homeland in an effort to better their lot in life.

I delayed reading this, the last book in the series, The Last Letter Home (1959), because I wasn't ready to leave the settlers until now. But having read about their struggles in Sweden, their horrendous voyage to America, the long overland trip to the Minnesota Territory, it was a relief to read that the Nilsson family, through hard work and the sweat of their brow, were able to enjoy a level of prosperity that they could never have enjoyed or even envisioned in Sweden.

This doesn't mean that Karl Oskar and Kristina Nilsson were able to rest on their laurels; far from it. Their prosperity could only be maintained by continued toil and diligence. It was still a hard life for Karl Oskar, but even more so for Kristina, because in addition to her household, child care, and gardening duties, her pregnancies occurred with unceasing regularity.

Then in the 1860s the nation went to war with itself. The Civil War did not touch the Swedish settlers directly, but another war fought during the same years exerted a dramatic impact on their lives.

It is more than ironic that Moberg's Swedish settlers were successful in freeing themselves from the oppressive class system that had characterized their homeland, but were only able to do so at the expense of the people who preceded them in their new home, and who themselves were being oppressed by the government.

This unfortunate chapter in Minnesota's history is one that has been repeated in every state in the nation. That history of course is the displacement of indigenous people.

Minnesota had been the traditional homeland and hunting ground of the Woodland Sioux (Dakota) tribe. Through treaty they had been restricted to a narrow reservation along the Minnesota River. They had been promised annuities that would allow them to purchase food from the Indian agencies or private traders. The government was slow to deliver the annuities and crooked agents and traders combined to cheat the Dakota when the tardy annuities finally arrived.

During the Civil War the lid blew off as the Dakotas went on the warpath. Eventually they were forced to surrender to volunteer troops. Some 400 trials were held by the military, some lasting only a few minutes, without legal defense for the accused. The outcome was that 303 defendants were convicted and sentenced to be executed.

President Lincoln commuted the sentences of all but thirty-eight of the Dakota tribesmen. Those who avoided execution did not go free, however, but were imprisoned.

The army executed the thirty-eight by hanging from the same scaffold in what was the largest mass execution in U.S. history.

Moberg identified with the Swedish settlers. He shared their grievances and he sympathized with their efforts to improve their lives in their new home. To his credit, despite this well-placed admiration for the settlers, he does not sugarcoat the unconscionable treatment that the Dakotas received. After all, they also had well-grounded grievances that he recognized and as a conscientious researcher he dug into the official record, and he reported the facts.

The title of this final book, The Last Letter Home, ends with that very thing. Over the years Karl Oskar had written letters to his parents and his sister in Sweden. But he did not write the last letter. It was written in 1890 by a neighbor to inform Karl Oskar's sister that he had died.

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Thanks once again, Diane