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 x 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.