"Travel Back In Time To When West Was Young"
 
With each new generation the distance increases between those who knew the pioneering life and those who can only read about it in books or on placards attached to curiosities in museums. The Library has some marvelous resources for those who wish to transport themselves back to the time of their pioneering forefathers to experience, albeit vicariously, the struggles and hardships as well as the awe and wonder of our early adventurers.

One of the best books is “Giants in the Earth” by O.E. Rolvaag. This book was originally published in Norwegian for a European audience. An English translation made the book an instant best seller and later, a classic in the United States as so many immigrants could identify with trials and deprivations of the book’s characters.
The story is about Per Hansa and his family, who leave their fishing village in Norway and travel by ship and train to Milwaukee and then on to Prairie du Chien. In wagons loaded with farm implements, seed, and food they push further and further west across the trackless prairie in waist-high grass into the Dakota Territories. Per’s wife, Beret, is pregnant for most of the journey and thinks over and over “how unspeakable lonesome this place….” The novel beautifully captures the sounds of the wagons moving across the land, “ “Squeak squeak!” said the one (wagon)…. “Squeak, squeak!” answered the other. “Tish-ah!” said the grass… “Tish-ah, tish-ah!” as it brushed against the wagon’s frame.”

The Hansa family, along with other families in their company, eventually settles and makes their homestead on the prairie. Life is tough for them. The winters are unimaginably hard on humans and livestock. Children are born and many die. The crops sprout with promise and then wither in the sun-parched soil. Itinerant preachers with “old world” church practices try to intimidate the homesteaders who had originally fled from a church-dominated homeland. “Giants in the Earth” is a saga of men and women who had come from an old part of the world into a new country, where upon they built for themselves a new home place and, in doing so, a new people.

Another book which remains an enduring record of plains settlement is “Slogum House”, by Mari Sandoz. Published in 1937, this novel was controversial for its time. For many years, self-respecting public libraries kept the book off their shelves because of the subject matter. Sandoz placed the story in western Nebraska at a bend of the Niobrara River—country very familiar to her. The central character, Gulla Slogum, a domineering and villainous woman, gains land and power by prostituting her own daughters and using her sons as gunslingers.

Willa Cather’s epic, “O Pioneers!” was published in 1913 and recounts the struggle for survival of a Swedish family in the 1880’s in southwestern Nebraska. John Bergson, a homesteader, works desperately hard on the land but to no avail and dies a broken man. His daughter, Alexandra, takes over the farm and after years of numbing work and privation, she and her brothers begin to reap bounty from the soil. One of the brothers is killed by a jealous husband and Alexandra falls in love with a laborer, Carl Linstrum. Her remaining brother and mother, however, encourage her to send him away. Nebraskans can easily identify with both “Slogum House” and “O Pioneers!” through the pioneer stories told to them by their aged relatives and by the stark and windswept landscape of western Nebraska.

Videos held by the library which relate to pioneer life include “O Pioneers”, the 1992 Hallmark Hall of Fame movie staring Jessica Lange. Another video, “Pelle the Conqueror”, stars Max Von Sydow and received the Academy Award for “Best Foreign Language Film” of 1988. The Library’s copy is dubbed in English and recounts the lives of a Swedish father and his son, Pella. As an aging widower with a child, the father is nearly unemployable. He is finally hired as a stable keeper and works under the watchful eye of the farm’s sadistic manager. As Pella sees his father being beaten down and degraded with no hope for the future, he leaves his father behind on the farm and strikes out to fulfill both their dreams in the “new world.”

Many readers will remember Dr. Robert N. Manley, who in the 1970’s and 80’s worked for both the State Historical Society and the University of Nebraska. His expertise was Nebraska history and he shared his knowledge liberally as a lecturer and an after-dinner speaker. The Library is very fortunate to have a 12 volume audio cassette set of his “Listen to the Land” series. In these hour-long cassettes, Dr. Manley recounts the entire history of Nebraska from the early French and Spanish explorers to the drovers on the cattle trails and the pioneering farmers in the Sandhills. These tapes would make for great listening for vacationers who plan to “See Nebraska First” this summer.