Free Next Spring an Oriole by Gloria Whelan

I
    My name is Elizabeth Mitchell. I am called Libby. On my tenth birthday, April 3, 1837, my mama and papa and I left the state of Virginia and everyone we loved. That was two months ago. Since then we have come a thousand miles through woods and swamps.
    Mama is from the Tidewater country and grew up in a big house with pretty things, while Papa is a surveyor from north Virginia. Mama loves the town but Papa loves the trees. When our neighbors cut down all their trees for a plantation, Papa said he was ready to leave.
    Then a land-looker came by with stories about the state of Michigan, where you couldbuy an acre of land for $1.25. He said pine trees there were so tall you couldn’t see their tops unless you lay down on the ground. Papa went out and bought a wagon. When he brought it home, Mama cried.
    I am more like Papa. Although I was sorry to leave my friends, I was glad to put away the dresses that pinched my waist and the shoes that pinched my toes. Instead of walking two miles each way to school, where the schoolmaster, Mr. Ripple, slapped our fingers with a ruler when we didn’t have our lesson by heart, Mama would teach me reading, writing, and sums. And each day there would be something to see that I had never seen before.
    It was early spring when we left Virginia. I could hear orioles and thrushes for the first time since the winter. I would rather hear an oriole sing than anything else in the world. The oriole is beautiful to look at, too, with its flash of orange that turns to gold in the sun.
    The wagon we traveled in was about threetimes as big as my parents’ bed. It had rounded bows stretched over the top. The bows were covered with canvas. Our horses, Ned and Dan, pulled the wagon. We could take along only what would fit in the wagon and still leave room for us to make up a bed at night. Papa took his axe, his musket, and his surveying tools. I took my doll with the face Mama had painted to look just like me. Mama took the most precious things she owned—her sketchbook and pencils. We also took salt pork, corn, dried apples, a skillet, and an iron kettle.

    After the two months of travel our wagon pulled into Detroit. We saw real houses made of brick and women wearing fashionable dresses. While we rode through the town I looked hard at everything to make it last. There were children playing games. There were Indians with piles of animal skins. There were stores with barrels of flour and molasses and lengths of bright-colored cloth. There were hotels with people sitting on the porches and there were ships sailing on the river. In a few hours I knew it would all be gone and we would be back in the woods, woods deeper than any we had traveled through before.
    When Papa stopped the wagon at the land office, Mama got out her sketchbook and began to draw the boats. She made quick marks, like bird wings, for the sails; as though the boats could fly through the air as well as sail on the water.
    Papa went into the land office to get the deed to our property. When he came out, a man walked over to the wagon to ask him where we were going. “We’re taking the Saginaw Trail,” Papa said.
    The man shook his head until I was afraid his top hat would fall off. “Why, there’s nothing there but trees,” he said. “You should settle in Pontiac. A lot of that land has been cleared.”
    “It’s the trees I’m after,” Papa told him.
    Later Mama asked, “Rob, that man sounded as though he believed we were daft. How do we know that the land-looker was telling us the truth?”
    Papa showed her his bill of sale. “Eighty acres for one hundred dollars, Vinnie. And why should we go somewhere where everythingis already done? I’d rather have a hand in it.”
    Because it was June it stayed light a long time, so we were able to drive the wagon halfway to Pontiac. Papa said we were making nearly two miles an hour. We camped in a kind of meadow Papa called an oak clearing.
    While Papa was making the campfire and Mama