They Sought a Country: Mennonite Colonization in Mexico

By Harry Leonard Sawatzky

This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1971.

• Language: English
• Publisher: University of California Press
• Release date: Sep 1, 2023
• ISBN: 9780520338425

Harry Leonard Sawatzky

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They Sought

a Country

They Sought a Country

MENNONITE COLONIZATION

IN MEXICO

With an Appendix on Mennonite Colonization in British Honduras

Harry Leonard Sawatzky

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PRESS

Berkeley, Los Angeles, London 1971

University of California Press

Berkeley and Los Angeles, California University of California Press, Ltd.

London, England

Copyright © 1971, by

The Regents of the University of California

ISBN: 0-520-01704-8

Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 78-92673

Printed in the United States of America

To Johann and Elizabeth Sawatzky

Foreword

The Mennonites, one of the oldest of the Protestant sects, originated in the Alps. They moved as colonists to the North German plain and to South Russia, arrived in Pennsylvania in 1700 and in the Canadian prairies about a hundred years ago, and settled in Mexico and Paraguay after the First World War. In their early years they suffered expulsion and occasional execution; later they migrated when restricted by governments in the exercise of their way of life.

Their creed, based on the authority of the scripture as interpreted by their own consensus, sets them apart from the dominant society. Their organization is congregational; the community determines its spiritual order and thereby also what is approved in material things and activity. Their separation from the world is declared by avoidance of ostentation, plain living, and plain dress. Congregational autonomy permits the revision of rules; and as a result numerous branches have been formed, including the communistic Hutterian Bretheren, who split off almost four hundred years ago.

Tolerance of apartness was found by becoming wholly rural communities (Bauern). Mennonites colonized agricultural land and lived in villages, as they still do.

The quality of Mennonite society, its changes, dispersals, and removals to new and strange environments, form the first part of this book, which is set forth with great insight and knowledge.

Leonard Sawatzky grew up in Mennonite communities of Manitoba, founded by his people in the 1870s, immigrants of German speech from South Russia and pioneer wheat farmers in the Canadian prairies. He has been a qualified farmer in the tillage of different soils, the management of crops according to season and weather, and the economics of agriculture. Also he has the background of Mennonite ways, and is an acute observer and a field geographer who is concerned with man as an ecologie dominant and disturber.

In the First World War the Canadian Mennonites lost certain exemptions, in particular as to schools. The government of Mexico guaranteed the privileges desired, land thought suitable was available, and a large exodus from Canadian prairie to Mexican plateau got under way. The most conservative congregations moved en masse, reenforcing their apartness by going to a land of strange language and culture. Colonization was by villages such as they had built in Canada after the manner of their Russian settlements. Their keeping to accustomed ways brought them to the edge of disaster in Mexico because they continued to farm as they had in Canada; however, they did learn in time.

The main story deals with the exodus, the relocation in Mexico, the reluctant accommodation to a greatly different environment, what they learned and failed to learn, and the expansion to new colonies needed by their natural increase and economic changes. It is an intimately observant study, critical and understanding, a study of real people in situations construed according to their faith in the purpose of their being.

CARL SAUER

Acknowledgments

I wish to thank the Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation for its support of the extensive field research that was imperative to the treatment of the chosen topic.

Particular thanks are also due Mr. Walter Schmiedehaus of Cd. Cuauhtemoc, Chihuahua, who placed his entire archive of materials pertinent to the life of the Mennonite colonies in Mexico at my disposal, and who in conversation provided many insights and suggestions. Similarly, I owe a great deal to that genial patriarch and former Vorsteher of the Manitoba colony, Gerhard J. Rempel of Campo 22, Blumenort, for the exceedingly useful documents and correspondence he provided from his extensive personal files; and to the old schoolmaster, David Harder, of La Batea, Zacatecas, whose personal chronicle provided the time perspective on many important events in colony history. I am equally indebted to Elder Peter B. Loewen of the Kleine Gemeinde at Los Jagüeyes, Chihuahua, for the materials he provided relative to his group. Others who particularly put themselves out to assist me were Secretary Menno Dueck of the Quellenkolonie at Los Jagüeyes; Vorsteher Abram Peters of Ojo de la Yegua; Isaac I. Dyck, Campo 18, Manitoba colony; Peter G. Froese, Campo 112, Grossweide, Swift Current colony; surveyor Heinrich J. Martens, Campo 21, Neuenburg, Manitoba colony; Deacons Peter Harms, Jakob J. Peters, Diedrich Friesen, and Franz Guenther of the Manitoba, Swift Current, Ojo de la Yegua, and Hague colonies respectively; Heinrich Bergen, Jakob B. Wiebe, and Jakob Bartsch of the Hague colony; Johann Bartsch and Abram Rempel of Yermo; Peter S. Peters of Neuendorf, Manuél, Tamaulipas; teachers Daniel D. Peters and Helen Ens; nurse Katherine Fehr and agronomist Philip Dyck of the Comité Menonita de Servicios; Victor Mendoza of the horticultural division of the state Department of Agriculture, Chihuahua; Patricio Gonzales of the Alliance for Progress (Banco de México); the management of the Celulosa de Chihuahua, Anáhuac, Chihuahua; John K. Reimer and Menno Loewen of Spanish Lookout, British Honduras; and Peter H. W. Wiebe of Blue Creek, British Honduras.

I was particularly appreciative of the warm-hearted gestures of the families of David B. Penner, Campo 2-B, Manitoba colony, and Jacob R. Loewen, Weidenfeld, Santa Clara colony, who invited me to make my headquarters with them when in their part of the country.

I wish also to thank all those friends whose interest in the project helped to sustain my efforts to its completion.

Finally, I wish to express my appreciation to Carl O. Sauer, James J. Parsons, and Harold J. Dyck of the University of California, Berkeley, for their sympathetic understanding of my purpose in attempting this study.

HARRY LEONARD SAWATZKY

Contents

Contents

Chapter 1 Background of the Mennonites in Mexico

Chapter 2 Preparations for Auswanderung

Chapter 3 The Colonies in Mexico

Chapter 4 The Physical Environment

Chapter 5 Accommodation to the Mexican Homeland

Chapter 6 Economic Evolution, the Privilegium, and the Attainment of Permanence

Chapter 7 Land Hunger, Expansion, and Other Developments

Chapter 8 The Gradual Economic Transformation

Chapter 9 Institutions and Forms

Chapter 10 The Quality of Living

Appendix Mennonite Colonization in British Honduras

Bibliography

Index

Chapter 1

Background of the Mennonites in Mexico

With few exceptions the Mennonites in Mexico are those who emigrated from Canada and their descendants. Others, numbering today perhaps less than a dozen families, came from Russia and the United States. Essentially all are the ideological descendants of the Anabaptist wing of the Protestant Reformation. More precisely, they have their ideological origins in that pacifist branch of the Anabaptist movement in the Low Countries which by the early 1540’5 had come under the leadership of Menno Simon, from whom the sect takes its name. Although in many respects they resembled other contemporaneously arising Protestant sects, the sum of the major facets of their ideological position—baptism only of adults upon confession of faith; insistence upon separation of church and state; refusal to bear arms; renunciation of participation in secular affairs of government; and refusal to take oath—sets them apart from the majority.

As a folk, the Mennonites came to be possessed of a strong agrarian tradition whose origins appear to lie in the earliest stirrings of the Anabaptist movement in the 1520’s. Although in the Low Countries the Anabaptists emerged out of the textile towns of Flanders, their position there quickly became untenable because of the organized opposition of the Roman Catholic authorities. Because of close economic and political ties, Spain, as a bastion of orthodox Catholicism, exerted considerable influence in Flanders. The heretics therefore dispersed into the countryside, where they could more easily avoid detection and the attentions of the Inquisition. Although they found new homelands in which they were officially tolerated, for over 200 years more the Mennonites were nevertheless to find it politic to continue to be die Stillen im Lande, the unobtrusive ones. This they have repeatedly found to be possible only from an agrarian base and rural habitat. The Mennonites now in Mexico—the descendants of conservative elements who were to migrate in turn to frontiers of settlement in Prussia, in South Russia, and in North America—early recognized that maintenance of the old order was dependent upon the staving off of cultural incursions from without. Mobility within the larger society leads to assimilation and the abrogation of the traditional way of life. It is only upon an unsophisticated agrarian base that the old ways can be at all maintained. To this end settlements in large, exclusive, self-regulating colonies within a relatively unsophisticated and linguistically, culturally, and ethnically different Umwelt have proven most capable of long-term survival. The maintenance of the integrity of such cultural islands rests upon strict conformity in secular and religious matters. In consequence, then, although in form the segregation of church and state is assiduously maintained, in effect each supports the other in exacting compliance with whatever norms of convention are seen as assuring continued survival of the traditional way of life. The avenues of permissible innovation are therefore narrowly circumscribed. Where divisions arising out of dissatisfaction with the existing ethic have gained momentum, the ultimate result has often been the withdrawal of the dissident faction, which then takes on an identity of its own. In consequence, there have emerged, over the generations, numerous persuasions, encompassing a rather broad spectrum of attitudes, whose adherents—400,000 or more in Europe and the Americas—consider themselves Mennonite. Of these, the Mennonite colonists in Mexico today represent some of the most conservative factions.

The First Migration

Seeking economic opportunity and protection from religious persecution, groups of Mennonites, by the mid-sixteenth century, had migrated from the Netherlands and established themselves in several colonies (Dorfgemeinschaften) in the region of the delta and lower flood plains of the Vistula and Nogat rivers near the Hanseatic Free City of Danzig, then under the Polish kings. Small numbers of Mennonites continued to immigrate to the area at least until 1565.¹ Although they were subjected to certain civil disabilities and sporadic threats of expulsion, the Mennonite cause always found champions among the noblemen whose lands bene- fitted from their skills and industry. In consequence, letters of grace (Gnadenbriefe) endorsed by the king and reaffirming their rights to residence and the practice of their religion were repeatedly obtained for them.² It was under these conditions, over a period of 200 years and more, that the Mennonites established the cultural solidarity and folk identity (Gemeinschaftssinn) which have marked their group coherence ever since.

The Movement to Russia

With the advent of Prussian rule over most of the Danzig region after the first partition of Poland in 1772, the civil and religious disabilities were somewhat modified by royal decree. The established Lutheran Church, however, alarmed at a progressive diminution of its tithe revenues owing to continuing Mennonite acquisition of land, succeeded in the late 1780’5 in obtaining the imposition of severe restrictions upon further Mennonite land

1. These marshy lowlands, lying from three to seven feet below sea level, had been largely diked, drained, and occupied during the thirteenth, fourteenth, and fifteenth centuries under the Teutonic Knights. During the 1520’5 and 1540’s much of this land was ruined and abandoned because of flooding. Thereupon Dutch entrepreneurs offered to restore the lost lands. They brought in Mennonite settlers to do the work of diking and draining, and then leased the land to them. Because of their valuable contributions to the economy of the region, the Mennonites were granted many liberties, including toleration of what was, at that time and in terms of contemporary thinking, their heretical religion. The Mennonite settlements of the Danzig-Vistula region persisted without interruption until the end of World War II, when the territory became Polish and the former residents were expelled. See The Mennonite Encyclopedia (Scottdale, Pennsylvania: Mennonite Publishing House, 1955), HI, 481-482, and Horst Penner, The Anabaptists and Mennonites of East Prussia, Mennonite Quarterly Review, XXII (1948), 212-225.

2. P. M. Friesen, Alt-Evangelische Mennonitische Brüderschaft in Russland (1J89-1910) (Halbstadt, Taurien: Verlagsgesellschaft Raduga, 1911), I, 42.

purchases. This hindrance to their economic life and the threat to the future integrity of their social and spiritual organization provided motivation for the Mennonites’ next migration, to South Russia.3

Their awareness of South Russia as a possible haven for settlement dated back at least to 1786, when the Russian government dispatched a colonization agent, Georg von Trappe, to the Danzig Mennonites with the special commission of persuading them to settle in South Russia. Von Trappe’s efforts, aided by growing problems of landlessness and impoverishment among the MerT- nonites, resulted in the establishment, in 1789, of the first Mennonite colony in Russia, Chortitza, on a stream of that name, tributary to the Dnieper, near Alexandrovsk (now Zaporozhe). It was the first large-scale migration in Mennonite history. In 1804 another colony, Molotschna, was founded north of the Sea of Azov near Berdiansk. In all, some 1,150 families comprising about 6,000 persons were involved in the establishment of these colonies.4

As colonists, the Mennonites came under the provisions of the Russian Colonial Law of 1763, a statute calculated to serve as special inducement to immigration from the more advanced countries of Western Europe.5 Apart from offering free land, the Colonial Law provided for perpetual exemption from military and civil service, freedom of religion, the right to control their schools and churches, and the right (and obligation) of agricultural colonies to be locally autonomous. Such colonies answered directly to a special branch of the Department of the Interior.6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 These conditions, together with the proviso that colonists refrain from all proselytizing among the Orthodox Christian peoples of Russia, effected and perpetuated a high degree of linguistic and cultural separation between the closed colonies and the Russian host society. In consequence, a strong element of ethnic identification came to be added to the character of the Mennonites as a religious sect.

The situation created by the Colonial Law would appear to have been one made to order for the Mennonites. Under it they could pursue a life removed from worldly influences, yet they were accorded far-reaching opportunities for developing their economic and cultural life. However, it also meant that, in keeping with the concept of the separation of church and state, the simple institutions of village administration brought from Prussia were elaborated to administer the secular affairs of large colonies. Further, before a thriving agriculture could be brought into being in the subhumid steppe, the practices and techniques of farming brought from the polderlands of the Baltic coast had to be radically revised and altered. The administrative and agricultural techniques which were subsequently worked out in South Russia came to be very much a part of the fabric of Mennonite institutions. Transplanted to America, these institutions have continued to this day, particularly among the more conservative of the Mennonite groups which are heir to the Russian experience, as the basis for the regulation of secular affairs wherever settlement has been made in closed colonies and as the prototype of their field husbandry.

Abrogation of the Colonial Law

The virtual autonomy of the Mennonite colonies in Russia was to be terminated by events which followed the liberation of the serfs in 1861. The rise of Pan-Slavism heralded the end of the era in which privileged colonies of foreigners could live aloof from involvement in the building of the Russian nation. The future status of the colonies was defined in 1870 through the issuance of an ukas by Tsar Alexander II. The separate administration of the foreign colonies under the Department of Crown Lands was to be abolished and the colonies incorporated into the prevailing Russian hierarchy of government.¹⁴ This meant an end to their isolation and privileged status.¹⁵ Most alarming to the Mennonites was the threatened extinction of their exemption from military service. Although the government intended to make provision for medical corps service by conscientious objectors, such duty was unacceptable to many Mennonites since it would still make them part of the military organization.¹⁶ The question of emigration was broached. In 1873 a deputation was sent to the United States and Canada to investigate settlement possibilities there. The tsarist government, in a conciliatory gesture, responded by dispatching Adjutant-General von Todtleben, then Governor-General of all South Russia but acquainted with the Mennonites since the days of the Crimean War, to seek a rapprochement and dissuade them from emigrating.¹⁷

In 1874 the military question was resolved in a manner acceptable to the majority of Mennonites once they came to grips with the idea that as citizens they must in the future render some form of service. Under the arrangement worked out, young Mennonite men might discharge their obligations by serving for three years in special cadres with the Forestry Department. Generally speaking, the more liberal-minded and propertied elements found it possible to reconcile themselves to the terms of the compromise. Many even welcomed the change of status from that of a tolerated sect to one of citizens with defined rights.¹⁸ Many, however, found the compromise too much of an impingement upon the perpetual privileges promised their forefathers at the time of immigration, and determined to emigrate. Even so, a wait-and-see attitude might have prevailed had not the newly promulgated laws stipulated 1880 as the final year in which emigration visas would be issued. No doubt this proviso helped to force the issue.¹⁹

The matter of military service was, however, only one aspect of a wider spectrum of problems confronting the Mennonite colonies. Particularly severe were the problems of landlessness and inadequate alternative economic opportunity. Ideological dissension within the Mennonite brotherhood and a strong reticence to accept the implications of the equalization of their civil status with that of the rest of the tsar’s subjects,²⁰ as heralded by the new laws, were further inducements to emigration.²¹

As word of the imminent migration spread, outside influences quickly came to bear on the direction which the movement would take. Both the United States and Canada were at this time actively canvassing Europe for immigrants. In the United States, settlement was largely left to private initiative, although state governments did make some overtures. The government of the Dominion of Canada, however, having but recently assumed sovereignty over Rupertsland, gravely concerned over a determined U.S. expansionism aimed at the western territories, and desperate to expand the economic hinterland, was most eager to achieve effective occupation of the west. Accordingly it maintained emigration agents in various European centers. In 1872 the government, upon being apprised of the proposed Mennonite migration, dispatched such an agent, William Hespeler, then stationed in Strasbourg, to South Russia in the hope of diverting them to Canada.²² At Berdiansk he arranged for a Mennonite delegation to visit Canada in 1873 at government expense.

In order to accommodate the Mennonites’ preference for group settlement, the Canadian government in 1873 set aside eight townships twenty-odd miles southeast of Winnipeg for their exclusive use. ²³ Once the delegates arrived in North America, however, railroad interests in the United States, over whose lines they had to travel in order to reach western Canada, and the governments of the states then on the frontier of settlement also began to court them, offering every possible inducement. ²⁴ The result was that the

delegates visited Manitoba last, after they had been exposed to the climatically and, consequently, economically more attractive conditions farther south. In the minds of some of the delegates these considerations seem to have modified, in some measure at least, the precise nature of the matters entrusted to them by their home communities, which had laid great stress upon a guarantee of military exemption and the right to form closed colonies.

25

The Migration to Canada

The Canadian government, on the other hand, proffered in addition to reserved lands essentially those statutory provisions with respect to military service, language, and religion which the Mennonites had enjoyed under their royal privileges in Russia— the Privilegium—whose infraction was the ostensible prime mover in the migration.26 With land reserved en bloc, village communities as well as the desired closed colonies could be established on the basis of homesteading alone, thereby greatly diminishing the need for capital.27 It is not surprising, therefore, that those who elected to come to Manitoba were among the most conservative and economically least well-endowed of the migrants.28 They represented four distinct subgroups of the Mennonite communities in South Russia—Bergthal, Chortitza, Fürstenland, and the Kleine Gemeinde (literally, little congregation).

Altogether the number of Mennonites who came to Manitoba between 1874 and 1880 was about 7,00o.²⁹ The Bergthal and Kleine Gemeinde people occupied the original reserve (later known as the East Reserve), embracing the present boundaries of the municipality of Hanover (Township 7, Ranges 4, 5, and 6, Townships 5 and 6, Ranges 5 and 6, and Township 4, Range 6, east of the Principal Meridian [97o west longitude]). The Chortitza and Fürstenland people took up land west of the Red River of the North, where another block, the West Reserve comprising seventeen townships—Township 1, Ranges 1 East to 6 West, Township 2, Ranges 1 to 5 West, and Township 3, Ranges 1 to 5 West, sixtyodd miles south-southwest of Winnipeg—was set aside in 1876.³⁰ On this reserve they initially occupied, en bloc, the well-drained western portion. Of the Mennonites who came to Manitoba all but the Kleine Gemeinde had their origins in the old Chortitza colony, both Bergthal and Fürstenland³¹ being daughter colonies. The Bergthal colony had led a separate existence since its founding in 1836. Fürstenland, while also independent of the mother colony, had been founded in 1864, just ten years prior to the migration. Its ties with the mother colony were therefore doubtlessly much stronger than those of the Bergthaler. Furthermore, whereas only a relatively small fraction of the Chortitza old colony emigrated, a majority of the Fürstenländer did so,³² including their religious and civil leaders, who subsequently became Elder and Vorsteher,³³ respectively, of the combined group in Manitoba.³⁴ For the sake of brevity, the Chortitza and Fürstenland people will henceforward be referred to as Altkolonier, a name they later themselves adopted.

The Bergthal group, on the other hand, emigrated en masse, taking its civil and ecclesiastical establishments along. Furthermore, whereas the Bergthaler began the movement to Canada in 1874, the Altkolonier commenced to emigrate the following year, by which time it was evident that much of the land on the East Reserve was marginal in quality. They thereupon cast about for better land. The result was the creation of the West Reserve in 1876.³⁵ Geographical distance was thus added to the organizational separation of the Bergthal and Altkolonier groups.

The Kleine Gemeinde group came originally from the Molotschna colony, where it had its origins in 1812 as a fundamentalist reaction to a growing secularization within the existing Mennonite Church communities.³⁶ In 1865-1866, 120 families had founded a separate colony, Borsenko, near Nikopol. It broke up in the exodus to Canada. In Manitoba they settled in five villages of their own, three within the East Reserve and two outside of either reserve, west of the Red River.³⁷ Others, who had remained in the Molotschna colony, settled in the United States.

Each of these groups was noted for its ultra-conservatism and strictness, aimed at separation and isolation from worldly (that is, secular) influences, maintained by stern church discipline which encompassed authority over civic life and schools, building styles, household innovations, vehicles, clothing, and language.³⁸ All of them, as a result of schisms and in response to real or anticipated threats to the continued maintenance of their ideological group integrity, have participated in migration from Canada and in the establishment of the colonies in Mexico which are the objects of this study.

Intrustion of Provincial Administrative Controls

For almost a decade the Mennonites in Manitoba came close to realizing the ambition of reestablishing their closed autonomous colonies on the Russian model. In 1880, however, the provincial legislature made provision for the inauguration of municipal government. Since this left local control in local hands, with higher echelons of government giving supervision only, this development need not have represented a serious infringement upon the status quo as far as the Mennonites were concerned. In the East Reserve, indeed, the transition appears to have been more or less painlessly made, since there were few requirements not already being fulfilled by the civic establishment brought from Russia. In the West Reserve, on the other hand, the Altkolonier, fearing interference from outside, objected to the new system. They refused to cooperate with the provincial authorities and generally ignored municipal matters.³⁹

There also were important contemporaneous developments within the Manitoba Mennonite community. Owing to excessive summer rainfall and consequent flooding in 1876 and 1877, crops were lost on the East Reserve and many settlers began to cast about for a more favorable location.⁴⁰ Consequently they began, in 1878,

to remove to the as-yet-unoccupied portions of the West Reserve.⁴¹ Since these Bergthaler did not have the same aversion to participation in civic affairs as did the Altkolonier, they quickly came to occupy the available positions as municipal functionaries, realizing that the more efficiently they handled their own affairs the less formal intrusion into their communities there was likely to be. The Altkolonier, in contrast, appear to have regarded the government’s action in establishing the municipalities as being little different from the incorporation of the Mennonite colonies into the volost system in Russia. A major cause of apprehension was the fact that, with the drawing of the municipal boundaries in 1883, English-speaking settlements were included with the Mennonites, ostensibly to assist with the work of organization, but quite probably also as an attempt to diminish the self-imposed isolation of the Mennonites.

⁴²

The Altkolonier, in order to present a unified front in opposition to these intrusions, used the disciplinary powers of the church to restrain dissident members. Although such measures were largely effective, it was not unusual for the Bergthaler to admit Altkolonier excommunicants to membership, thereby not only diminishing the effectiveness of Altkolonier church discipline but also deepening a growing rift between the two groups. Sanctions were invoked by the Altkolonier against the Bergthaler,⁴³ and the former, to reassert their integrity in membership and doctrine, assumed the new church name of Reinländer Mennonites.⁴⁴ A measure of the overall success of their resistance to change may be gauged from the fact that, until a majority of them left Canada in the 1920’s, the Altkolonier tenaciously maintained an internal administration which was granted tacit recognition by municipal officers, who dealt with them through the Vorsteher.⁴⁵ What was to be more important for the Altkolonier, however, was that the foregoing episode was only the first in a series of struggles with the Canadian authorities—struggles not so much against outside influences, really, as they were strivings for the maintenance of the status quo—which ultimately led to their emigration.

The Schools Question

The next major infringement upon the solidarity of the Mennonite community in Manitoba came through the medium of the schools. The document detailing the Mennonites’ rights and privileges gave them assurance that they might educate their children without any kind of molestation or restriction whatever. This was interpreted by the Mennonites to mean the right to complete autonomy in respect to schools, with instruction by their own teachers, exclusively in the German language and according to a curriculum of their own selection. For many years they remained free of government intervention. The pressure for change emanated this time from within a portion of the Mennonite community itself.⁴⁶

In 1885, the Bergthaler in the West Reserve installed their own Elder, thereby becoming a separate, autonomous group. The action appears to have been taken merely out of recognition of the problems created by the distance separating them from the parent body in the East Reserve. Shortly, however, a minority group of the West Reserve Bergthaler was to take action which led to serious inter- and intragroup conflict.

As the limited educational heritage of the Mennonites deteriorated owing to lack of cultural interchange, some of the more forward-looking of the Bergthaler—particularly businessmen in the emerging urban centers such as Gretna and Winkler on the West Reserve—began to agitate once more for the creation of public schools and for the teaching of English.47 The provincial authorities actively encouraged these activities, pointing to the prevailing low educational standards among the Mennonites and emphasizing the assured need of English in the future.48 In 1889 a group of West Reserve Bergthaler, including, significantly, their Elder and four ministers, opened a teacher-training school at Gretna—the present Mennonite Collegiate Institute. No doubt, in addition to the stated reasons, they were responding to the same motivation that prompted participation in municipal matters, namely that by looking after their own affairs to the satisfaction of the authorities they could forestall incursions from without.49

The Altkolonier and indeed the majority of the Bergthaler violently opposed the new school. To them, knowledge of the English language would give the young in particular access to the world, while any diminution of the German being taught would seriously threaten the continued functioning of the church, based as it was on the use of the German language.⁵⁰ Inter- and intragroup tensions during this period were intensified with the passage, in 1890, of the Manitoba Schools Act. The act provided that public schools would in the future be nonsectarian, with English as the language of instruction. It did not, however, stipulate compulsory attendance. The conservative Mennonites used this legal loophole and simply continued, or reverted to, the private school. In some mixed areas where progressives insisted on public schools, however, all ratepayers were taxed to support them, thereby imposing an added burden upon those who continued to support the private schools. In a few districts, under similar circumstances or because of jurisdictional disputes, no school at all was maintained. In 1890 the great majority of the West Reserve Bergthaler split away to form a new conservative church group, the Sommerfelder. The Bergthaler of the East Reserve,⁵¹ to register their disapproval and sever connections with the renegade progressives, changed their name to Chortitzer.⁵²

These issues and events, which threatened totally to disrupt the traditional Mennonite way of life, were next involved in a new development, the creation of daughter settlements away from the arena of conflict, in the Northwest Territories.⁵³ By 1890, good land was becoming scarce and dear in the reserves. The portion occupied by the Altkolonier, roughly the western half of the West Reserve, was becoming particularly overcrowded.⁵⁴ Nevertheless, the desire to withdraw from the unsettled conditions in Manitoba was a significant factor.

Beginning in 1890, Mennonites from Manitoba began to move westward. Although reserves were not granted, it was later made possible for them to take up contiguous mixed tracts of crown and railroad land,⁵⁵ a concession particularly attractive to the Altko- lonier. Sommerfelder, Chortitzer, and Altkolonier began settling first in the Hague-Osler area north of Saskatoon, then Sommerfelder and Chortitzer in the vicinity of Herbert.⁵⁶ Another settlement, in the semiarid region south of Swift Current, was begun by Altkolonier in 1900, on an island of relatively good land surrounded by broken range country, which afforded them a welcome measure of isolation.⁵⁷ These settlements predominantly perpetuated the traditional form—agricultural villages and a local internal administration—to which these groups had adhered in Manitoba. The magnitude of the movement into the west is indicated by the census of Canada, which in 1911 reported 14,400 Mennonites in Saskatchewan, almost as many as the 15,600 in Manitoba.⁵⁸

In Manitoba, during the 1890’5 and into the early years of the present century, significant educational progress was made among the Mennonites, and a substantial number of public schools teaching both English and German were once more created, even in some decidedly conservative communities.⁵⁹ There was, however, no participation from the Altkolonier, whose church leaders invoked excommunication and ostracism upon members who permitted their children to attend any but Altkolonier private schools. Nevertheless, a small trickle of Altkolonier and other conservatives was continually being won over to the liberal camp. This gradual process was, however, rudely interrupted through the precipitate action of the provincial government when, in 1907, it decreed that all public schools must henceforward fly the Union Jack.⁶⁰ The reaction among the Mennonites was predictable. Suspicious of the implied militarism of the flag-flying policy and fearful of its implications for their military exemption in the future, they resisted.⁶¹ One-quarter of the Mennonite public schools once more reverted to private status.⁶²

Eventually the provincial government realized that the flag policy was not going to achieve its goals of instilling patriotism and a sense of the British tradition. In 1910 a German-speaking school inspector was engaged for the Mennonite reserves, to try and regain the ground lost over the flag issue. Indeed, so successful were the efforts of Inspector A. Willows⁶³ that between 1909 and 1916 the number of public school classrooms in the Mennonite districts rose from forty to eighty, the number of pupils in such schools more than doubled,⁶⁴ and the number of students in Grades 9 to 12 rose from two to sixty five.⁶⁵ From the twenty-odd Altkolonier districts there was, however, no cooperation.

It appears probable, however, that even the majority of the Altkolonier might have eventually been won over to acceptance of

the public schools and instruction in English as well as German⁶⁶ had not World War I intervened and precipitated events in a manner which resulted in Altkolonier emigration.

With the advent of the war and a rising (and assiduously nurtured) tide of nationalism, the Mennonites discovered themselves to be an alien minority group which, besides being conscientious objectors, was German in culture and language. In 1916 the wartime Manitoba government, taking advantage of nationalist feeling and support, moved to put an end to the bilingual public schools and to impose English as the sole language of instruction.⁶⁷

To implement this policy, the provincial legislature in 1916 passed the School Attendance Act, making attendance in public schools mandatory for all children between the ages of seven and fourteen⁶⁸ unless they were receiving instruction privately at a standard satisfactory to the provincial authorities. Provision was made to assist teachers in bringing their qualifications up to the prescribed standard.⁶⁹ Although the bilingual clause in the Public Schools Act, which had been responsible for much of the difficulty in which the provincial educational system found itself, was simply deleted, the way was left open for part-time instruction in other languages.⁷⁰

The progressive Mennonite districts more or less readily complied with the new requirements. In more conservative areas the idea that the flag was purely a military emblem was gradually losing ground.⁷¹ There were still many, however, who had as yet barely been persuaded of the desirability—or indeed, permissibility—of the forward-looking changes already in effect, among them the teaching of English. The subordination of German to English, together with the imposition of a curriculum which included such worldly subjects as history and geography, was perhaps too great a single step. The conservative clergy, for reasons previously cited, objected to these new and, to their minds, threatening innovations, which were furthermore regarded as being in direct contravention of the rights and privileges promised them in 1873. To their influence was ultimately added that of some teachers who, although the government expressed its willingness to help them raise their qualifications, eventually despaired of meeting the requirements and joined the reactionaries.⁷² From the Altkolonier there was, predictably, no compliance whatever with the new law.

However, the reactionary Mennonite element was able to escape, for the moment at least, the requirements of the Attendance Act. On the advice of the incumbent member of the provincial legislature for Rhineland,⁷³ who at the time was also minister of agriculture, many Mennonite districts reverted once more to private schools.74 The advice was the more unfortunate in that, coming as it did from a senior member of the provincial cabinet, those who were guided by it were mistakenly led to believe that their position was unassailable by the school authorities.75 Eventually the provincial administration, exasperated at seeing the purposes of its legislation thwarted, embarked on the course of action which ultimately precipitated the emigration of a large part of the Mennonite community. Under the provisions of the Public Schools Act, private schools were required to meet standards acceptable to the provincial authorities. In 1918 measures against the move toward private schools were instituted. Ratepayers in districts which were planning to revert to private status were warned against taking such action. If, however, they persisted, the district was placed under the control of an official trustee, and its school continued to operate as a public school. Next, the public schools which had earlier reverted to private status were revived by the same expedient. Finally, in the areas where no public schools had theretofore existed, the private schools were condemned as inadequate and public schools created. 76

In Saskatchewan the ultimate course of events was much the same as that in Manitoba. When the school legislation was framed at the founding of the province in 1905, the unfortunate aspects of the Manitoba education laws were already manifestly apparent. In consequence, uniform standards for all Saskatchewan schools, public and sectarian, were written into the law from the beginning.77

Since the new province was for some years to come still in a pioneering state, the government chose not to impose uniform English-language schools at once.⁷⁸

The situation in Mennonite communities in Saskatchewan was in some ways comparable to that in Manitoba, with progressives and conservatives, both church-group oriented, taking opposing positions. The majority of Saskatchewan Mennonites never offered resistance to public schools.⁷⁹ The Altkolonier and Sommerfelder, however, who had settled in the province when the entire region was still under federal jurisdiction as the Northwest Territories, had established their customary private schools. When the government of Manitoba imposed compulsory attendance, Saskatchewan followed suit. The premier of Saskatchewan, after personally satisfying himself as to the standard of education offered in Mennonite rural private schools, informed the Altkolonier Elder in the Hague-Osler district of his unfavorable impressions. If the Mennonites wished to retain their private schools, they must conform to Department of Education standards.⁸⁰ At Swift Current, the inspector of schools reminded the Mennonites that the School Attendance Act was binding upon them in Saskatchewan as in Manitoba.⁸¹

The response of the Altkolonier and of some of the other conservatives was to simply ignore the public schools. In the fall of 1918 the Manitoba authorities abandoned attempts at persuasion and resorted to the courts. Parents who failed to show valid cause why their children were not attending a recognized school were fined and, when that failed to achieve the desired compliance, imprisoned. The same course of action was taken in Saskatchewan, where the measures resorted to were, if anything, harsher and more peremptory. Most of the other conservatives quickly capitulated. The Altkolonier, however, were in a real dilemma. Undoubtedly many would have chosen to obey the law rather than suffer incarceration or be gradually impoverished by fines⁸² had such compliance not meant excommunication and ostracism. Some attempted to evade the issue by moving into as-yet-unorganized districts. Needless to say, great unrest prevailed among the Altkolonier in both provinces. Few of them ever understood fully the implications of the education laws. To their leaders it was a test of the faithful by which unity and like-mindedness could once more be established. There was talk of emigration.

World War I and the

Conscription Question

The education laws were, however, only one test of the Mennonites’ traditional concepts during this time. Late in 1916, the Dominion government let it be known that, in order to determine the manpower situation in the country, all males between the ages of sixteen and sixty-five must register with the authorities. Although there was no mention of a draft, this announcement caused consternation among the Mennonites. Many feared registration was preliminary to a military call-up. A combined delegation of five men from Saskatchewan and Manitoba was immediately dispatched to Ottawa to remind the government of its promise never to require military service from the Mennonites. They were given assurances that the government would honor its commitment. It is believed that most of the Mennonites ultimately registered. The Altkolonier of Manitoba and Saskatchewan called a joint conference (Bruderschaft) which sat in the village of Reinland in the West Reserve. Some of the leaders were persuaded that the registration was not unlike a census and could therefore be complied with. Others were convinced of its militaristic intent and suggested emigration in preference to compliance.⁸³ This occasion marks the beginning of the sentiment for migration.

The suspicions regarding the intent of the national service registration were to some extent justified. In 1917 military conscription was imposed in Canada. Young Mennonite men were called up like any others. When they proclaimed themselves conscientious objectors, they were hauled into court. Their trial may be considered to have been a test case, for the crown scrupulously adhered to its commitment guaranteeing them exemption from military service. The trial, at which the defendants acquitted themselves rather inadequately when questioned closely as to the basis of their scruples with respect to military service, was well publicized, however, and served to intensify public resentment against the privileged status of the Mennonites.84

Resort to the Courts on the School Issue

Meanwhile, during 1917, 1918, and 1919, the pressure for acceptance of the public schools continued to mount. In Manitoba all remaining rural Mennonite private schools were condemned in the fall of 1918.⁸⁵ When the provincial authorities brought a test case before the Manitoba Court of Appeals in August of 1919, it was ruled that, notwithstanding promises made to the Mennonites by the federal government in 1873, the province of Manitoba had the right to enact and enforce the education laws.⁸⁶ The ruling generated considerable feeling among the Mennonites that the Dominion government had cynically deluded them in order to persuade them to settle in Canada at a time when immigrants were desperately needed to secure effective occupation of the west and broaden the economic base of the country. The judgement of the Manitoba Court of Appeals was protested, ultimately to the Privy Council in London, but to no avail.⁸⁷

The Sommerfelder, who had never taken as adamant a stand against the school legislation as had the Altkolonier, appear