Personal Experiences Among the Doukhobors in Canada

by Joseph Elkinton

Joseph Elkinton (1859-1920) was a prominent Philadelphia Quaker who, together with his father Joseph S. Elkinton (1830-1905), was instrumental in organizing and providing material assistance from the Society of Friends in the United States to the Doukhobors during their immigration and settlement in Canada.  In the summer of 1902, Elkinton visited several Doukhobor villages in the Prince Albert and Yorkton districts and came to know the people and their surroundings quite intimately.  His observations were published in the book “The Doukhobors: Their History in Russia, Their Migration to Canada” (Philadelphia: Ferris & Leach, 1903).  The following excerpt, taken from Chapter One of his book, is a vivid and moving account of his travels among the Doukhobors and the hospitality and kindness of heart which he encountered.

The untiring devotion of my father, Joseph S. Elkinton, to these Russian peasants, has stimulated my interest in them since their arrival in America. During the summer of 1902 I visited several of their villages in the Prince Albert and Yorkton colonies, and came to know the people and their surroundings quite intimately. One can scarcely imagine a more novel and interesting experience, or one more likely to expand the sympathies, than this trip afforded. The warm, personal interest in these people which has been awakened in me by actual contact with them I would be glad to communicate to others, and for this reason I make my narrative a closely personal one, hoping that my readers may feel, in some degree, as if they had traveled with me to the homes of these Doukhobors, had shared with me their truly oriental hospitality, and had felt, as I did, their truly Christian kindness of heart.

Much has been published of late that greatly misrepresents the majority of their communities. Several hundred of the Yorkton colonists, who number 5,500 in all, have been deluded by a religious fanatic – not originally of their communion – who has posed as a prophet, and has taught that the use of animals as beasts of burden is unscriptural, and that Jesus would soon come again in person.

(l-r) Joseph Elkinton, Eliza H. Varney, J. Obed Smith, Commissioner of Immigration.

As there were only 285 cows, 120 horses and 95 sheep liberated by the Doukhobors, and sold by government agents to prevent irresponsible persons from capturing them, it is evident that no considerable part of the forty-seven villages near Yorkton were involved in this craze. Each village has a hundred or more cattle; and the Doukhobors bought back all these liberated animals at the sale.

The pilgrimage was a more serious affair, and was happily brought to an end by the government officials before there were many fatalities from exposure. Several hundred men, women and children marched thirty or forty miles to Yorkton “in search of Jesus.” The women and children were detained by the authorities at that place, being housed and fed by the English-speaking residents, while the men went on to Minnedosa, some 150 miles toward Winnipeg. Here they were put upon a special train by the Superintendent of Immigration, Frank Pedley, and Colonization Agent Charles Spiers, taken back to Yorkton, and so returned to their homes.

The sixteen hundred Saskatchewan Doukhobors have taken no part whatever in these foolish acts, and the large majority of those about Yorkton very much disapproved of them. The newspaper press has, by its exaggerated accounts of these matters and misleading comments thereon, done great injustice to the Universal Brotherhood. Probably one of the most accurate of these reports appeared in The (New York) World of Eleventh month 9th, 1902, and is given in full as a fair statement of this unusual pilgrimage.

“The strange outbreak of religious mania among the Doukhobors of the Northwest Territories of Canada has aroused widespread interest, not merely in the Dominion, but throughout America. People everywhere are talking of these ‘Spirit-Wrestlers’ as they call themselves; these men who will not fight, will not work nor use horses nor cattle, who are strict vegetarians, and who follow to their farthest limit the logical conclusions of their beliefs. Six hundred men and boys have been marching through Manitoba, exposed to all the inclemency of the winter season, sleeping on the snow-covered prairie, with no other roof than the sky, with insufficient clothing, wholly dependent for their food on the charity of the residents.

“They were looking for the second coming of the Saviour. Jesus is to reveal Himself to them, they believe; is to be reincarnated, to meet them on the snow-mantled prairie and lead them forth to evangelize the world. He was to have met them at Millwood, according to their avowed expectation – a pretty little village perched on the steep banks of the mighty Assiniboine – but though He came not, their faith did not falter. He simply tarried to try them.

“Now they are sure He will appear in Winnipeg, the capital city of Manitoba, which they expected to reach by the 15th.

Terpeniye (Whitesand River), the Model Village.

“The Doukhobors live in communities. They hold property in common. Tracts of land have been reserved for them by the Dominion Government. Some of these communities are located north of Yorkton, and others near Rosthern and Prince Albert, in the Northwest Territories. Smaller colonies are to be found in the vicinity of Swan River, in Manitoba. Three months ago a religious agitation broke out among the Yorkton and Swan River colonies. They refused to work their horses, or to milk their cows, turning them loose on the prairie. They refused to wear anything that had an animal origin; they discarded their leather boots and wore rubbers. They would not eat butter, eggs, or indeed any article of food connected however remotely with an animal.

“To the number of 1,700 men, women and children they marched into Yorkton, bent on a pilgrimage to evangelize mankind. They were met by the Dominion immigration officials and the women and children, after some little resistance, were compelled to accept shelter and food. The men, to the number of six hundred, marched away to the East, leaving comfortable homes, stocked with food for two or three years, and wives and children, to wander, they knew not where, till they should meet the Lord.

“This pilgrimage naturally evoked widespread interest in all classes of people and, to gather some information regarding the motives, intentions and beliefs of the Doukhobors, I went up to meet them. I overtook them at Binscarth, a little village on the northwest branch of the Canadian Pacific Railway, about two hundred miles from Winnipeg. They came straggling into the town in a procession two miles long. Picturesque figures they were, mostly clad in blue, and with gaudily-colored scarfs. The wide, flaring skirts of their coats were kilted behind. Though the snow lay three inches deep on the ground, fully a score were barefoot. More than double that number were hatless.

“In front strode a majestic figure, black as Boanerges, and with a voice like a bull of Bashan. He was barefoot. On his head was a brilliant red handkerchief, and his body was clothed in a long, dusty white felt mantle, reaching almost to his feet. He strode along at the head of the procession. Suddenly his face began to work, his eyes to roll and his hands to twitch, and in a few moments he began to jump in the air, clutching with his hands and shrieking aloud in Russian: “I see him! I see Jesus! He is coming! He is there now, my brothers! You will see Him soon!”

“The long cortege stood stone still. Straining their eyes to catch the beatific vision, they talked to each other a while, during which their leader calmed down to a state of almost torpor, from which he, without a moment’s warning, aroused himself to another religious frenzy.

“The Binscarth people gave them food – dry oatmeal, which they poured in little heaps on blankets, half a dozen pilgrims helping themselves from each heap. The meal was preceded by their favorite chant from the 8th chapter of Romans, and by the repetition in unison of prayer. Then the pilgrims sat in parallel lines and ate oatmeal dry from the sack. This, with bread, apples and the dried rosebuds picked from the prairie rosebushes, formed their menu.

“After the meal, which lasted about an hour, they repaired to the back yards of the residences, and for a quarter of an hour the pumps were worked without cessation to satisfy their thirst. An hour afterward the procession was formed, and the eastward journey resumed.

“I walked with them for the next eleven miles, conversing with different members of the pilgrim army. Knowing no Russian, I had perforce to talk only to those who could speak English. They do not themselves admit that they have any leaders. As we talked, a crowd pressed around us, eager to hear the discussion. My questions were translated into Russian for the benefit of the pilgrims not speaking English, and before Vassili Konkin, who acted the part of interpreter, replied, the answer was often the subject of some minutes’ argument and deliberation.

“I introduced myself as one who desired to know the reason of their wandering at this inclement season, in order that I might explain to all who read newspapers the motives prompting their pilgrimage. They all expressed their pleasure at seeing me, raising their hats, such of them as use them, with the courtesy innate to the Russians. They said they were glad to explain their beliefs to any one, much more to one “who had many mouths” – indicating their appreciation, I supposed, of the power of the press.

Winter scenes in the Doukhobor villages.

““We walked along in silence for a while, until at last Konkin said: “We go to tell the peoples; is that not good, yes? What for Jesus come first time? To live good life, to teach peoples how to live. We try live like He lives – go to the peoples and teach them, and tell them He comes.”

““But why did you start at the beginning of the winter? Why not wait till next spring? Then it will be warm and sunny. Now, if you go on and sleep on the snow, many of you must die.”

““Jesus Christ, He say people must think of Jesus today. Tomorrow God will see. He make cold warm. If not, He make us strong to bear cold. If we die, we see Him soon.”

““But others of your people, Vassili, do not think as you do. They think you very foolish in this matter.”

““Yes, that is so,” replied Konkin. “But he see the light soon. In old days people think Jesus foolish. They laugh at Him, yes; they nailed Him to cross, and He die, and for long time men laugh and say, “How foolish! Him fool.” Same way apostles. Peoples call them all fool, and none believe them. Some day, maybe after we die, people say, “Doukhobor right,” and they believe us. Maybe we no see Jesus yet; no, but we tell the peoples, and we see Him when we die. More soon we dies more soon we see Him.

““God is necessary, but government – no. We wait till Jesus comes, then He take the bad people off the ground. When He come, then bad man trouble no more.

““The Lord says, peoples not get rich – Jesus tell every one not get rich here, but to get rich in sky. If all poor, nobody would steal and be bad. If all poor, all good.

““Peoples say, “You must come back and live on farms.” God say, “Can’t work for two boss.” If live on farm and work for myself, me like me more than God and for God do nothing. If I like God for boss, I go out and walk and tell all the peoples.”

“I had told them that I had a two-year-old daughter, and Konkin was greatly interested.

““What you teach your little girl?” he asked. “What you give her to eat?”

“When I had told him he shook his head disappointedly.

“Should no eat meat,” he said. The living should not live on the living.”

““And you don’t work your horses, either?” said I. “Didn’t God send them here for us to use?”

““You like to work you?” he asked. “How you like put in plough, wagon, beaten with stick, eh? No; God He say be kind to cattle, to all things; so we no work them.”

““But, if the cattle are not to be used, why were they made?”

““They made to look at, to make us glad when we see – like the grass, the flowers.”

“It was long past dusk. The sun had dipped behind dusky bars of orange and crimson, and gray, mysterious shadows crept across the prairie. Darkness closed down on the earth. Ahead could be seen the twinkling lights of the hamlet of Foxwarren, a score of dwellings and stores scattered around an elevator and the railway station. The snow began to fall in light flakes. The pilgrims halted and made their pitifully inadequate preparations for camping. With their hands they tore up some long grass to serve as beds. From their pouches each took a handful of dry oatmeal and munched it. Some scattered in the darkness to hunt for the dried fruit of the rosebush. With no shelter, under the open sky, they lay down on the snowy prairie, wearied with their twenty-mile tramp. Before flinging themselves down, they sang a psalm and quoted Scripture verses responsively, standing meanwhile with bare heads while the snow fell quietly over them.

“Then they gathered about me to say good-by. I must have shaken hands with two hundred of them.

“You will tell the people what we say?” asked Konkin.

“I promised. Vassili looked at me sorrowfully, patted me affectionately on the shoulder and gave me a word of parting counsel. “We all of us wish,” he said, “that you may see the light. We wish you not to smoke, not to work for money. Do not make it hell for self there” – pointing to my breast – “make it heaven. We love you much. We tell Jesus to come for you. Goodnight!”

“As I turned to go several came up and asked me to read certain portions of Scripture. I noted down by the light of a match the following: Luke 12, Matthew 25, Romans 8 (their favorite chapter), Matthew 10, and Ephesians 6. Then, followed by many more “good nights” in Russian, I set out to walk to Foxwarren. As I neared the comfortable dwelling where I was to spend the night, I thought of those misguided pilgrims lying shelterless on the prairie, exposed to the rigors of a Manitoba winter. They have certainly forsaken all to follow their Lord, and, however their actions and beliefs may fail to harmonize with prevailing religious thought, none can deny the sincerity of these pilgrims.”

Winter scenes in the Doukhobor villages.

How inexpressibly pathetic! Especially when one can recall their honest faces and many kindnesses. One is reminded of the Crusaders and of dancing dervishes in such an account, but it is only an exhibition of the character of the untutored Russian peasant, temporarily excited by religious enthusiasts. Dr. J. T. Reid, of Winnipeg, who is thoroughly acquainted with the Doukhobors, and was familiar with the facts of this migration, gave his opinion of these over-zealous pilgrims in The Montreal Weekly Witness of Tenth month 6th, 1902, as follows:

“We do not censure the Puritans as a class because there were many religious fanatics amongst them. To censure the Doukhobors just because a minority of them are religious enthusiasts is as unjust as the Doukhobors themselves are in judging all Canadians by the more uncivilized minority of our people whom they occasionally see on the frontiers of our civilization in the West. To censure them as a people on account of the fanaticism of their minority is as illogical as it were to class the whole American people with those who follow Dowie and Mrs. Eddy.

“In the West there are six classes of men who have at all times seemed to glory in the abuse of the Doukhobors:

“1. The politician of a certain school, whose political game is “to get in” and who makes political capital out of every opportunity “to get the other fellow out.”

“2. The rancher, who wants the whole earth within the bounds of his own ranch.

“3. The class who cannot appreciate the high moral tone of the Doukhobors, and therefore look upon them as hypocrites.

“4. A fourth class who are so narrowly sectarian that they are unable to see any good outside the pale of their own particular creed.

“5. A fifth class whose grasping propensities in the West are being daily put to shame by the more Christian brotherly kindness of the Doukhobor, to whom Christianity is nothing if it do not include the love of neighbor.

“6. Some of the most unjust things said against them have been said by disappointed would-be missionaries, who thought the Doukhobors were spiritually benighted and were anxious to enlighten them.

“Just as every Anglo-Saxon “craze” runs its course, declines and disappears, so will it be with this fanatical exuberance of the Doukhobortsi.”

Indeed, that the craze very rapidly passed its height, and began to decline, is shown by the following extract from the Manitoba Free Press, Eleventh month 21st, 1902:

Frank Pedley, Supt. of Immigration C.W. Spiers, General Colonization Agent

” Mr. C. W. Spiers, colonization agent of the Dominion government, returned Wednesday from Yorkton, driving through the Doukhobor settlements as far as Fort Pelly, where he was met by Agent Harley, of the Swan River district. “The Doukhobors,” said Mr. Speers, “have returned to their respective villages, and are again occupying their former homes. Their houses were in perfect readiness to receive them. Ample clothing was carefully piled up in the corner, and things set in order, previous to these people starting on their pilgrimage. The villages are well supplied with roots and vegetables, and these have been protected by the department from frost during the absence of the people. In fact, I had arranged some time ago for everything to be protected. The villages are also well supplied with grain, consisting of wheat, oats and barley, and a quantity of flax. There is yet some threshing to do, and a number of grist mills that have been built by this community are in operation.

“These people will require very little to support them for six months, and they are at present consuming their own products. There is a greater spirit of contentment than I expected to find, and a great majority of the returned pilgrims will again assume the duties of life along right lines.

“I was informed that they purchased nine pairs of horses at Pelly on their return journey, which would go to prove that they are moving in the right direction. They met rather a cool reception from their brethren who remained and were not affected by the mania. This is having a good effect, because it must be remembered that only about twenty per cent of these people were affected. I have been having officials take an inventory of all ascertainable property, and find the villages in a most satisfactory condition as far as supplies are concerned. The pilgrims feel that their missionary work was not a success, and I think I can safely say that eighty per cent of the younger men are impressed with the necessity of commencing to work. I met a few who still want to preach, and there are a few leaders who will possibly keep up an agitation for a time, but it would be a difficult undertaking for any set of men to conduct such a movement again. I consider the situation highly satisfactory, and that the great majority of these people will be saved to the labor market of Canada, and make useful settlers.

“The influence of the Doukhobors who remained at home is constantly working in the right direction. There has been considerable outside influence brought to bear upon these people, and some are remaining among them to advise them. As to how successful these influences may be, I cannot say. I am led to believe that these people should be let alone for a time, as they have had sufficient excitement. I have observed that in Saskatchewan, where we have sixteen hundred of these people, they are considered good settlers, are in a state of perfect contentment, and have had no one among them giving any special advice.

This excitement has brought the whole Brotherhood into discredit in the view of those who are not personally acquainted with their many sterling qualities, but the Canadian Government has shown its liberal policy, and the humane action of its officials throughout these disturbing outbreaks has been most commendable.

Indeed, it was one of the privileges of my late visit to the Northwest Territories to converse with these officers, who have had so many perplexing problems to solve in connection with the colonization work of the Dominion. This has embraced many nationalities within a few years.

All these immigrants come to Winnipeg, as the distributing center for Western Canada, to ascertain their ultimate location. Thus the Immigration Hall in that city was a place of peculiar interest to me, and a whole week was spent in studying the character of those who gathered in and about it.

Group of Immigrants in yard of Immigration Hall. Photograph by Joseph Elkinton.

The group near the front door are Swedes who had just arrived from their native land to try their fortune in America. It was in this building that eight hundred Doukhobors were temporarily housed and fed three years ago, and the testimony of their caretakers was very pleasing, as both the janitor and the matron told me they had never before had such a clean and orderly lot of people to provide for. The group in the yard is made up of four Galician women, two Germans from Russia (with bread under their arms), two Doukhobor men (with broad-brimmed hats), and a few Canadians. It was in this yard that I met forty or more Doukhobors who were seeking work in Winnipeg. An honest-faced youth of twenty at once attracted me, and it was pleasant to talk to him in English, and to learn that he bore the name of his uncle, Peter Verigin.

Group of Doukhobors in Yard of Immigration Hall. Photograph by Joseph Elkinton.

These Doukhobors assembled in the Immigration Hall on the first day of the week to recite their hymns and go through the Sunrise Service. This is always accompanied by the greatest seriousness of manner, and one can but be impressed with their sincerity and love one for another. A week later I witnessed this ceremony in their Saskatchewan settlement and photographed the scene in front of a granary. The men were mostly absent, working on the railroad, and this accounts for the greater number of women present at the “service.” The boy is bowing to all the women in this group. Each man bows three times, kisses each of the other men once, and then bows once to all the women, to which they respond collectively by a bow. The women also bow and kiss each other as the men do. Finally, all the men and all the women bow at the same time, bringing their foreheads to the ground in true oriental fashion. All this is accompanied by a united chanting of their sacred hymns, and is preceded by the recitation of portions of the scriptures, or of some prayer in ritualistic form.

This service began at four a.m. and continued until six o’clock. The early hour was originally chosen so as to escape persecution by their enemies in Russia, and they quite agreed with me in thinking that the meeting might now be held a little later in the day, as that necessity no longer exists. They always gave opportunity for remarks by the visitors, and listened most respectfully to what was said to them. Their patriarch, Ivan Mahortov, was present at the third sunrise service I witnessed, in which twelve men and thirty-six women took part, and he turned round at the conclusion and explained their belief with great dignity and clearness. My interpreter said he recited some Greek Church hymns dating back to 400 A.D. and even included the Virgin Mary in the summing up of their creed. Such is the force of early associations!

Sunrise Service. Photograph by Joseph Elkinton.

After the “service” in the Immigration Hall, we had a Molokan (a Russian sect in many respects similar to the Doukhobors), who entered heartily into sympathy with the occasion, to interpret for my father and myself; and we found that these Doukhobors had some wrong ideas about the Canadian Government, which we endeavored to correct. A
bright little girl interpreted for the few Doukhobor women present.

From Winnipeg we went on to Rosthern, the nearest railway station to the Saskatchewan colony. This journey of five hundred and seventy-five miles was comfortably accomplished in twenty-four hours. To travel whole days with few human habitations in sight, and scarcely a fence or a tree, might have a depressing effect if it were not for the beautiful prairie flowers and occasional antelopes that can be seen from the train window. Yet there is endless entertainment in traveling on the Canadian Pacific Railway if one studies and sympathizes with the various classes of travelers. There are almost always four or five colonists coaches on a train, in addition to the tourists’ and Pullman cars.

At least half a dozen nationalities were represented on our train, and some of these representatives were going to their new homes on the prairie. On one journey of three hundred miles we had as fellow travelers a party of Welsh people who had just arrived from Patagonia, where they had lived twelve years. The children spoke Spanish, and had forgotten what English they had once known, which the parents regretted. The name of John Evans was evidence of their Welsh origin.

Upon our arrival at Rosthern we were met by Michael Sherbinin, and Nurse Boyle. The former is a Russian nobleman, who has cast in his lot among the Doukhobors, and is now teaching their children, while Nurse Boyle is ministering to their physical needs. Both of these useful workers were sent out under the auspices of the English Doukhobor Committee of London Yearly Meeting of Friends.

Next morning we started on Doukhobor wagons for the village of Petrofka, on the Saskatchewan River, twenty-five miles distant. On the way our Doukhobor driver gave us a soul-stirring narrative, told in Russian, of his experiences in the Caucasus. His sons had been imprisoned and so cruelly treated that one of them died in consequence. With tears running down his cheeks the father told us how he had nursed this young man, and how he had followed another son to his Siberian place of exile.

While we were still listening to the driver’s story, a Mennonite overtook us. Seeing the overloaded condition of our vehicle he very kindly invited Michael Sherbinin and myself to share his comfortable spring wagon, which we accepted. These Mennonites are particularly good neighbors to the Doukhobors. Our new friend told us that the Doukhobors had come to his house one evening three years before, as they were seeking their new home. There were several hundred in the company, and most of them were walking. They asked that a few of their women might be sheltered for the night. At first it seemed beyond his power to take any of them into his house, as it was small, but something in his heart bid him to do what he could; and he said it was always a great comfort to him that he had yielded to the impression, especially as he afterwards learned something of their experiences. He could not understand their language at the time he took them into his house, nor did he then know what brought them in such numbers to his door. We rode with our kind Mennonite friend to his home on the east side of the Saskatchewan River, and shared the evening meal with him before we rejoined our comrades.

Crossing the Saskatchewan River – Petrofka Ferry. Photograph by Joseph Elkinton.

To reach Petrofka we had to be ferried over the Saskatchewan. The approach to the ferry was quite perilous at this time, as the river was twenty feet higher than usual, and had overflowed its banks. The descent was very steep for several hundred feet, and, right at the river’s brink, it became almost a sheer precipice. The following account from the pen of a traveler who had made the crossing the preceding winter will give a vivid idea of the difficulties to be overcome:

“Of trail there was scarce a semblance. For three hundred feet our path lay down a slope as steep and as smooth as a toboggan slide. At its foot were a few willow scrub, and then came a clear drop of fifty or sixty feet. If the team became unmanageable, and could not be stopped at the foot of the slide, the prospect of the drop beyond was not reassuring. . . . The interpreter said he would walk down, so as to lighten the load and pilot the way. He started slowly and cautiously, but soon the slope and his weight increased his speed. His feet twinkled faster and faster through the powdery snow that rose up and enveloped him waist high like a halo, above which his rotund body and gesticulating arms could be seen as he rushed to what seemed almost certain destruction. But Providence, in the shape of the aforementioned willow bushes, interposed, and he crashed into their interposing boughs, and fell, a portly, breathless heap of huddled humanity, among their protecting branches. Next it was my turn. I grasped the lines short, braced myself against the foot rail, and chirruped to the team. But neither of them exhibited the slightest inclination to proceed. The sorrel was particularly rebellious, and plunged and reared on the edge of the steep in a most nerve-racking fashion. Finally, with delicate little steps, and snorts of fear, they were persuaded to essay the descent. Until a little more than half way down, all went well. Then one of them slipped, and in a second, cutter and team were slithering down, the former on their haunches. Down below I could see my companion scramble with frantic haste out of our line of descent. His plump figure could be seen through the blinding snow mist raised by the horses, crashing through the underbrush with an agility out proportion to his weight. At the foot of the hill I partly succeeded in pulling the team to the left, thus avoiding the sheer drop ahead, and giving the horses an opportunity of catching their feet. The thin, limber willow twigs sang like whips as, bowing my head and straining on the lines, we dashed into the brush. There was a moment’s wild rush, then a plunge and a bump, and the cutter was still – jammed against a tree stump whose top was covered with snow. The horses shook themselves, gave a snort or two, and then the brown proceeded nonchalantly to help himself to some outcropping tufts of slough grass. Neither of the team had a scratch, and no injury was apparent to the cutter. My companion “lost his English” as he described the slide, and went off into German and Polish and Russian and Magyar in recounting its incidents.”

The milder season of our own crossing reduced the peril of descending the banks, but increased those of the actual passage of the stream. The Doukhobor who managed the raft which was attached to a steel cable stretched across the river, felt very anxious about our passage, as there was a strong wind blowing us against the current. Once landed, we had a still more alarming experience, plunging through such mud as half buried our horses, and allowed the water to come into the wagon bed. The “snap” of our wagon shows it in such a hole or ditch, with the horses in water up to their breasts, and a woman nearly thrown out of the wagon. It was a very narrow escape, both for herself and child, for she was thrown violently over the side as the wagon dropped into this hole.

Prairie trail and slough, west bank of the Saskatchewan. Photograph by Joseph Elkinton.

The mud was axle-deep in the roadway up which we struggled to the solid bank. When this was ascended we were greeted by some thirty Doukhobor girls, chanting their plaintive Russian hymns of welcome, while the men and matrons of the village stood on the brow of the bank. Thus surrounded by a hundred of these swarthy sons and daughters of the soil, and overlooking the tumultuous stream we had just crossed, one could but think of Miriam when she sang her song of deliverance on the banks of the Red Sea.

It was a sight not soon to be forgotten, as these very picturesquely-attired peasants stood on the top of that bank, with the sun setting at their backs, and the prairie stretching around us on either side of the river for thirty to forty miles in all the glory of its early summer welcome.

Women waiting to extend a welcome to arriving guests. Photograph by Joseph Elkinton.

After photographing this group, before the evening shades had fallen – (one could see to read until 10 p.m.) – we proceeded to the hospitable home of Michael Sherbinin, upon the edge of the village, which we made our home while visiting the villages of this settlement of eleven communities.

A typical house, with sod roof. Photograph by Joseph Elkinton.

When I called at one of the Doukhobor houses in Petrofka, the father, lifting his little boy in his arms, told me how the child had clung to him when he was forcibly taken from his family by the Caucasian authorities, and how, after three year’s imprisonment, the lad did not know him. His argument with the military officer was written out at my request, and is substantially as follows.

““The Lord Jesus commanded us not to fight, but to be kind and meek; – to love equally all who live on the earth, as Christ the Saviour of our souls loved us all, and gave his body to be crucified for us sinners, and has manifested his love before all nations. He said, “Resist not him that is evil.””

““But why do you not want to serve the Imperial Power? We are going to fiercely persecute you and severely punish you in order to subdue you under the power of the Russian Emperor, and we will leave your wives and children fatherless.”

““Dear Mr. Procureur, our Lord Jesus Christ said, “The time will come when they will persecute you for my name’s sake; but be ye not afraid; for to the widows I will be a husband, and to the orphans I will be a father, and my eye beholdeth you all.”

“The Procureur shouted to the Russian soldiers, “Take him to prison!” Two of the soldiers ran up to me and put iron chains on my hands, and drove me rudely to the prison castle. My mother, father, wife and children followed me, and besought the soldiers to allow them to come and bid me farewell. The soldiers replied: “Do not come near here, or we will run our bayonets through you.” The baby boy cried and stretched out his hands to me. The soldiers shouted at the little boy, “Get away, far away!” and one of them ran with his gun after the boy and my wife. They got frightened and ran, and one of my boys fell down from fright. Then the soldier ran up to my wife and hit her with the butt end of his gun. I said to my parents and my wife: “Farewell;” and I entered the jail in the town of Kars. There I was kept three months without being permitted to see any visitors. On the 15th of November they took me to the prison of Tiflis, a journey of three hundred and fifty miles. My parents, my wife and children followed me. They applied to the soldiers, asking to be allowed to bid me farewell. The soldiers answered: “The commander of the fortress has ordered us not to admit you near. Go away from here, or we’ll shoot at you.”

“Then I said from afar to my relatives, “Live ye in the law of God and His hand will protect you!” My father Gregory said, “Our dear child, we are very sorry to part with thee, but the Lord is our help. Let us go forth to suffer for His name’s sake, and he will give us to meet where there is no parting!” Then the elder conveying soldier said, “That will do for talking! Go on!” And then the children stretched out their little arms towards me and cried bitterly.

“After these events I sat in the prison of Tiflis three years. After these three years were over the Procureur gave leave to my parents to come and visit me. On the 25th of May, 1898, my parents arrived to see me. They came to the yard of the prison, and I was admitted to meet them. I greeted them, and called to my little son, Nicolas, who was then eight years old; but the boy did not recognize me. He said, “Let me go; I don’t know thee at all!” With these words he escaped from my arms and ran to his mother. I wept bitterly and said: “My God, my God, my children have forgotten me!”

Doukhobor team, with the Mennonite Reserve in the distance. Photograph by Joseph Elkinton.

The view shows a Doukhobor wagon like that in which we had started to cross the prairie from Rosthern, standing at Michael Sherbinin’s house, with Nurse Boyle wearing a white cap. This particular load of Doukhobor women and babies had come twenty miles for the purpose of having the children vaccinated. Michael Sherbinin took them all into his house and gave them a hearty meal. The school house, which Friends of Philadelphia are building, will occupy a site similar to this upon which Michael Sherbinin’s house stands. The Mennonite Reserve is upon the other side of the river.

The Sherbinin homestead. Photograph by Joseph Elkinton.

In traveling across the prairie to the surrounding villages we used the Bain Wagon, as shown in the picture. The front seat is occupied by Vassili Vereschagin and his wife, who were helpful to us in many ways. They were about forty years of age, and were among the most progressive in adopting American ways of living. After Michael Sherbinin and his wife, who occupy the middle seat of the wagon, had interpreted my desires to them, Vassili would entreat his brethren to send their children to school. My mission was primarily an educational one, believing, as I do, that the education of their children is the effective way in which to reach their parents. Night after night we held conferences, and four out of five of their communities desired that a school should be started. I cannot forget the earnest faces of those strong men and women, standing three and four deep, in their clean, whitewashed homes, often until near midnight, eagerly drinking in the suggestions that were made regarding their educational needs. If those persons who have formed such unfavorable opinions of the Doukhobors because of the late outbreaks of fanaticism in the Yorkton district could visit these villages in the Saskatchewan settlement, their ideas would be greatly modified.

Ready for the start, to visit the Saskatchewan villages. Photograph by Joseph Elkinton.

These Doukhobors have taken up their homesteads, and they have done marvels in the past three years towards improving their condition. The soil is very fertile and being within the wheat belt, great crops of wheat and flax are harvested.

As we journeyed from village to village, separated sometimes by ten or fifteen miles, we saw badgers, coyotes, foxes and wild ducks, to say nothing of the innumerable prairies dogs. Upon our arrival at a village, the men and women, and frequently the children, would be gathered at a house, selected by themselves, in which we were to be entertained.

As they were fond of being photographed, after the usual salutation of bowing was over, I would take snapshots of the groups thus assembled. The women when at work always tuck up their skirts, which never trail upon the ground.

Village scene at eventide. Photograph by Joseph Elkinton.

An interesting street scene is at eventide, when the cows are coming in from the prairie. The large logs on the right in the picture were taken out of the Saskatchewan River by the Doukhobors to be used in building their houses.

As we passed through one village (Troitzkoye) we dined with Simeon Nicolayevitch Popov, a man of sixty-two years of age, who had built an entire flour mill, including the dressing of the mill-stones from rough stones which he found in the neighborhood. Three horses were turning these stones, and we found from personal experience that the flour was fine enough to make good bread, which we enjoyed eating.

The Doukhobors where I visited were vegetarians without exception, and they all seemed very robust in health. They need fruit, and it is a hardship that it cannot be grown in that climate.

A model home. Photograph by Joseph Elkinton.

Occasionally we would see evidences of considerable artistic ability. A certain house-yard fence attracted my attention, and I asked our driver who made it. He replied that he was the owner and had built it with his own hands. Everything about this house gave evidence of taste and skill. He is seen in the picture standing near the angle of his fence, while near at hand were several trees which he had planted.

The great oven is a characteristic feature of these Russian houses. The oven front stands six feet high and five feet wide. The interior baking space is approximately three by four feet. On top of this oven several small children can be stowed away for the night.

Baking pancakes. Photograph by Joseph Elkinton.

I stood by this maiden of seventeen years who holds the long-handled lifter, as she deftly placed the copper pan near the glowing embers, and quickly withdrew it with a toothsome pancake. The batter, cup and saucer, with the buttered cloth, are at the left, while the ashes were pushed to the right of the vestibule of the oven proper.

A baby show. Photograph by Joseph Elkinton.

At another time five young mothers were grouped in front of one of these ovens. The bonnets of these babies were quite elaborate, and their eyes very bright.

When we reached the village of Gorelofka, Savili Feodorevitch Choodyakov and his brothers, with their kind mother, were ready to give us a warm welcome, and we cannot omit to mention how all the good people of this village entertained us with royal hospitality. They also bestowed presents of clothes upon me. A widow of seventy years came to me with her marriage scarf, saying that she would presently die, and as her children were either dead or too far away to give them this sacred emblem of her marriage, she wished to bestow it upon me, as otherwise it would go into her coffin. The scarf is made of Russian crash, about two yards long, and has several bands of silk of various colors below a section of conventional design. Each woman is presented with one of these when she marries. They had shortly before given me a new coat and sacred sash, such as is worn during their Sunrise service. The cap (fedora) is made of a short, curly lambskin, and came from the Caucasus.

The same style is seen on a little boy on the extreme right of a group of men, women and children. In this photograph it may also be observed how two layers of prairie sod make the roof.

Group of chanting girls. Photograph by Joseph Elkinton.

The women wear a very picturesque and comfortable hood, with a rosette of bright color on the front of it. The velvet band which encircles the head is invariably black; otherwise there is considerable variety in the color used, although the shape is always the same. In this group none of the chanting girls are wearing their white handkerchiefs or shawls over their hoods, as I requested them to take these off when being photographed. This white shawl is invariably worn by the women in the fields, and whenever they are working, the hood being reserved for special occasions. The young man on the right was about twenty years of age, and, being lame, was serving as shoemaker to the village.

Sheepskin coat and Doukhobor doll. Photograph by Joseph Elkinton.

The heavy winter sheepskin coat was quite comfortable when riding across the prairie, even in midsummer. The women in this group were sixteen and eighteen, and the boy about twelve years of age. The doll baby they had dressed especially for me.

When about to leave this colony I found that one or more of the Doukhobor girls could talk English quite well, and so we had some conversation about their coming home with me as domestic helpers. It was very interesting to see how the proposition was regarded by them. After thinking about it for some time, the younger of the two thought she was willing to come, while the elder hesitated, for fear she “would not get back in time to get married.” I asked her how old she was, and she replied that she was sixteen. The younger was thirteen. The men and women generally marry when about seventeen years of age.

Sweet sixteen. Photograph by Joseph Elkinton.

After a week spent most pleasantly, barring the mosquitoes, in this colony on the Saskatchewan River, we returned to Winnipeg via Regina, in order to visit the Yorkton settlement, which consists of forty-seven villages, situated from thirty to ninety miles distant from that town. The South Colony is on the Assiniboine and White Sand Rivers, while the North Colony is located near the Swan River, north of Fort Pelly, and there are six villages on Good Spirit Lake. The ride of two hundred and eighty-two miles from Winnipeg to Yorkton occupied a whole day by train, but it fave us another opportunity to appreciate the great work which the Canadian government is accomplishing in colonizing these vast stretches of prairie. We saw two trains of thirteen cars each, entirely occupied by Galicians. One of these trains unloaded before us. It was a sight that continually comes back to me as one of the most remarkable of this interesting journey. There were throngs of little children and larger boys and girls with packages of every conceivable shape upon their backs, while their parents were laboring under loads that almost eclipsed their picturesque costumes.

It was four days after our arrival at Yorkton before we could get a carriage to take us the fifty miles north to Poterpevshe, where “Grandmother” Verigin lives. The roads were so bad, on account of the constant rains for the two preceding months, that they were thought to be impassable. These days of waiting were improved by gathering together the Doukhobor men who had come to Yorkton to trade and to find employment on the railroad. One hundred and fifty Doukhobors had been called for by railroad contractors, and runners had been sent out to the various villages to bring them to Yorkton.

Yorkton Doukhobors. Photograph by Joseph Elkinton.

The picture shows such a group as we repeatedly conversed with, and they represent the class of men who went on the late pilgrimage. They could not appreciate the good will of the Canadian government in its homestead regulations, and they were afraid of signing their names to any document, as they had always gotten into trouble by doing so in Russia. Time and again we endeavored to enlighten them, but without the same success we had had with their Saskatchewan brethren. Notwithstanding this, they had traits of character we could admire.

Frederick Leonhardt and Michael Sherbinin were both invaluable interpreters, and the kindness of the former toward Michael Sherbinin and myself in sheltering us under his most hospitable roof will always be a pleasant memory.

Robert Buchanan had come from Good Spirit Lake to Yorkton to see us. He and his wife have been very good friends of the Doukhobors, and can testify to their faithfulness as reliable servants. A Doukhobor and his wife have had entire charge of their home affairs for months at a time. He had influenced the Doukhobors near his home to take up their homesteads and not to go on the late pilgrimage, or release their horses and cows.

Blacksmith shop. Photograph by Joseph Elkinton.

After this interview we started for Poterpevshe, and soon passed the Doukhobor blacksmith shop in Yorkton, where lived the largest woman I saw among them. Our team was one of the finest, but the driver dreaded the journey, as he declared he had not seen such trails during the past twelve years. We dined on the open prairies, and had it not been for the innumerable mosquitoes our campfire lunch of coffee and boned turkey would have been very much enjoyed.

The mosquito pest of this country is greatly against it. The air was literally full of them during the entire trip, and they would settle so close upon the coat of our driver as to change the color of it from black to yellow, as the wings of this variety of mosquito are straw-colored.

About this time we saw several men and boys drawing a loaded wagon, and as they drew near I asked one of them, through the interpreter, why they did not use horses. His reply was very candid, and in the words of Scripture (Rom. 8: 19, 22): “The whole creation waiteth and groaneth even until now for the manifestation of (mercy on the part of) the sons of God.” I remonstrated that the Apostle was not writing about horses, but of a spiritual bondage which our unregenerate wills inflicted upon “the better part” in our own souls. He wished to include the animal creation as “sons of God.”

The tenderness of this man’s conscience was most apparent, and his honest face appealed to one strongly, so I knew not which to pity most, his body or his mind. They pulled that wagon through many sloughs that were dangerous for our horses to enter, and after a round trip of seventy miles I saw him again, and said I was very glad that they had survived their toils as horses. He looked earnestly into my face, and, with tears running down his cheeks, said: “If you would only think as we do, God might make some use of you in your generation, for I see you have some ability.” I assured him it would be some time before I thought as they did about using horses, and that their children would not hold such ideas.

About him stood a group of the most sincere and kind-hearted people I had ever met, showing every evidence of prosperity; and I felt that it was a psychological problem to eliminate this over-conscientious mental attitude from such a kind and true spirit. So it is with all the fanaticism that has appeared among this really worthy people. A people who will not fight, or steal, or drink anything intoxicating, or smoke, or use profane language, or lie, have a character which will bring forth the best qualities of Christian citizenship.

Men serving as horses. Photograph by Joseph Elkinton.

If we can but help and stimulate them to educate their children, in another generation these ignorant peasants will be transformed into intelligent farmers and tradesmen. It is greatly to their credit that they are very particular as to the teachers they admit I among them, and no one need undertake that function who has not a sympathetic temperament.

About sunset, after six hours of plunging in and out of those dreadful sloughs, we came upon a group of twenty-five women who had been picking ginseng root on the prairie. These Doukhobors were seated upon the grass, eating their evening meal, and apparently enjoying it greatly. They rose most courteously, but I requested them to be seated again while I photographed them.

That night was spent in the home of a German family with eight small children, and apparently several million mosquitoes. As it was a post-office, with a weekly mail service, we endeavored to divert our minds from these uncomfortable guests, by writing home, until the small hours of the morning.

Our experiences the next forenoon almost defy description, for these sloughs were such as Bunyan’s Pilgrim never saw. Three times our horses came to a standstill in the midst of sloughs axle-deep in mud, and holding three feet of water above the clay which underlies the eighteen inches of rich black soil. The situation was novel, to say the least of it. One horse lay flat on his side, holding his head above the water, while the other sat like a dog upon his haunches.

The interesting part of the situation was to see how admirably the horses understood the difficulties of their position and responded to the driver’s word. Instead of struggling, they rested until the driver got out in the mud and water and released the traces, when they sprang up and plunged forward on to more solid ground. A rope was made fast to the front axle, wound around the pole of the carriage, and extended some fifty feet beyond it. The horses were then attached to this rope, and with some encouragement from the driver they pulled us out. Twice after this we were compelled to get out of the carriage before it could be moved through the mud of the slough.

Sitting there surrounded by water, annoyed by mosquitoes, pretty well covered with mud, and in the midst of a thunder-storm, gave us ample opportunity to moralize upon the blessings of home. Never were mortals more thankful to get under a roof than we were that day when we reached a Doukhobor village and were taken into one of their comfortable houses, where we had our clothes dried. It is this whole-hearted hospitality that impresses all who have visited these Doukhobors, and we cannot undervalue this trait, however defective they may seem in other respects.

This was the village in which my father had some three months before found a welcome, after he had traveled in a circle for eight hours at night. He was at that time on his fourth visit to these settlements, and had left this village to go on to the next about five o’clock in the evening. The driver lost the trail, and they wandered about in the dark, until the horse brought them back to the starting-place, about one o’clock in the morning.

A few hours brought us to the home of “Grandmother” Verigin, near the center of the village of Poterpevshe (meaning in Russian, “those who have patiently endured”), a veritable haven of rest, on the north side of the White Sand River. This old lady of eighty-six is recognized by all the Doukhobors as a queen among them. They all pay their oriental respects to her by bowing most profoundly. These salutations were often quite impressive, and accompanied by much sincere feeling.

For three years I had desired to visit her, and to hear her history from her own lips. She told me, through my friend and faithful interpreter, Michael Sherbinin, how she had married when about seventeen years of age, in the Crimean Colony of the Milky Waters, and had lived there peaceably until 1842, when, by order of Nicholas I., she was taken to the Caucasus. The details of this journey were thrilling.

She had three little children, all under eight years of age, whom she cared for as best she could, while their party was driven along by the soldiers. When they came to the Caucasian mountains there were no good roads, as at present, over the mountain passes; and she remembered how the thirty men in their company could scarcely keep the wagons from going over the precipices. It was also dangerous for their horses and cattle to graze, and she would gather the grass for them with her own hands. The Circassians and other hillsmen would throw stones down on them from the heights above their heads, in more than one instance resulting fatally.

They were finally made to settle in the Wet Mountains, at an altitude of five thousand feet. Even here they prospered far beyond what was thought possible by their persecutors.

One night her husband was away from home, and her brother-in-law was also absent trading among some Tartars, who persuaded him, much against his preference, to remain with them over night. They then went to his house, and, as she opened the door, they killed the wife of the very man they had sheltered. They thought they had done as much to “Grandmother,” for they struck her four death-dealing blows upon the head, one of which opened an artery, and then kicked her under the bed in a pool of her own blood. She rose up, however, and tried to open the window near her, but the robbers, supposing it was the effort of her little boys, broke the window-shutters in her face. She added: “Had they known I had gotten up, they would have come back and killed me.”

When the men entered the house she had told her boys to keep very quiet on top of the oven, and they escaped being injured. They plainly saw the faces of the robbers who took ten thousand roubles out of a strong box, so that they were able to identify them at a later time. “Grandmother” told with much feeling how her dear little boys were asked to go among thirty criminals and point out those whom they thought to be the men who had entered their home and nearly killed their mother. They designated seven, and afterward “Grandmother” was told to say which they were, if she could. She said her eyes were so nearly closed by the swelling resulting from her wounds that she had to hold her eyelids open to see any of them, and yet she selected the same seven that her boys had indicated, without knowing their choice. The ten thousand roubles were returned to the family.

“Grandmother” has had seven sons in Siberian exile at one time. Her son Peter Verigin has been their recognized leader for the last seventeen years. He and his brother Gregory are now liberated, and on their way to America.

As indicating the vigor of this old lady’s mind the reader may be interested in a letter recently received her.

“Village Poterpevshe, llth mo. 25th, 1902

“My Dear Friend, Joseph Elkinton:

“I beg pardon for the delay in answering your kindest letter which I received this autumn. Be assured that I had the greatest desire to answer you immediately, but it is only now that I availed myself of the opportunity to express to you the deepest gratitude and love for your extreme goodness, manifested by you towards us from our first meeting.

“God bless you for all your generosity, and I ask His favor to be worthy of it and to give me the possibility to see you again in my life. I pray to God for your health, and hope He will preserve you for the happiness of all our people.

“I am extremely sorry to confess that a part of us vex all our benefactors and friends by their foolish actions, but I hope that (our) Creator will enlighten their reason and help us to arrange our common life in the best way. The Lord had pity on me and sent me a great consolation – my son Gregory, who came recently from Siberia, and the joyful news that my other beloved son Peter is on the way to Canada. I am sure you will partake of my hearty rejoicing and accept the humble compliment of your devoted [friend] truthfully,

“Baboshka (Grandmother)

“Anastasia Vasilinovna Verigina

“P.S. – This letter has been written by T. Dickericks, the brother-in-law of V. Tchertkov, who came from England to stay the winter with this (our) people, and help them in their needs, and he is very glad to have the opportunity to express to you, dear sir, his thankfulness for all the care and trouble that you and your venerable father took during the first time of settlement of his old friends, the Doukhobors.”

“Grandmother’s” household, in which I spent three happy days, was composed of “Grandmother,” her daughter Anna Podovinnikov, and three daughters-in-law, with three grandchildren. This house was very comfortable, and attractively clean. It was built of logs, some thirty by fifteen feet, one-storied, hand plastered inside and out. The inside was white-washed so beautifully one always felt sure of absolute cleanliness, and this is characteristic of their houses in general. The beds were made of feathers. The chief room was eighteen by twelve feet, with the usual oven in the corner, near which I slept most comfortably. This room is back of the group on the porch. A vestibule six feet square allows the visitor either to enter this apartment, or, turning to the right through a similar door, to step into “Grandmother’s” smaller room. Here she sat in the finely upholstered chair seen in the frontispiece, to receive her guests in queenly fashion.

“Grandmother” Verigin’s home. Photograph by Joseph Elkinton.

The patriarch, Ivan Mahortov, met me here, having come thirty-five miles to see me. He is the most active man of ninety years I ever met, and I shall not easily forget his energetic manner when telling us of Stephen Grellet’s and William Allen’s visit to the Doukhobors in 1818. After hearing his description of the two Friends, I am quite disposed to think that it was William Allen rather than Stephen Grellet who prophesied concerning their coming to America.

It was certainly a very remarkable utterance for any one to prophesy so clearly, eighty years in advance, the future experience of a people, telling of their future persecutions, imprisonments, exile to a foreign country, prosperity and visits from Friends.

The Patriarch gave us some of his experiences during the twenty-eight years he served in the Russian Navy. From 1840 to 1853 he had no active service. Then the Crimean War opened, and he was stationed on the warship Catharine II., then anchored off Sevastopol. The high officials of that town, with the officers of the Russian Army and Navy, were gathered in the Greek cathedral, hallowing the Easter service, when the English threw a cannon ball at the cupola, and shattered it over their heads – without, however, injuring the congregation. The Russian ship Northern Star was at once ordered to prepare for action by Commander-in-Chief Lazarev. A shot from the English man-of-war disabled her side-wheel, and it was proceeding to capture her, when two Russian frigates came upon the scene and tugged her out of danger. Thus two of the greatest “Christian” nations celebrated the resurrection of the Prince of Peace in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and fifty-three!

When the old Slavonic inscription over the cathedral door in St. Petersburg: “My house shall be called a house of Prayer for all Nations,” was mentioned, this veteran of ninety summers naively remarked, “Yes, and my countrymen have many a time fulfilled the rest of the text.”

He was in the engagement when the Russian fleet sank nine out of ten of the Turkish men-of-war at Sinope, in the Black Sea.

The united fleets of England, France and Turkey then concentrated their attack on Sevastopol, anchoring at Eupatoria. As the Russians had no mounted artillery, the Russian sailors carried their guns and cannon on shore. Ivan Mahortov well remembers the difficulty of bearing a cannon thus strapped to his back. Two Russian admirals, brothers, by the name of Estomin, planned a successful stratagem at this time, when they were likely to be overpowered. A courier was dispatched to the Emperor Nicholas stating there were sixty thousand Russian soldiers in reserve to meet the allied forces at Sevastopol, when in fact there were only twenty thousand. He was sent through the enemy’s lines, duly captured and searched, and the Russians were allowed to withdraw their troops from Sevastopol without capture because of this misrepresentation.

Mahortov said: “At least three times during the siege of the city, when the batteries on either side were decimating the ranks of the other, and these were being immediately replaced, he heard repeatedly the appeals from the enemy in these words: “Brethren, Russ (Russians) don’t hit – fire aside”; and the Russians responded, “Fire aside, brother.”

“After this,” the old man told us, with tears in his eyes, “there was no more such carnage, and would to God that men and angels might never witness such hellish work again!”

He related another instance of that humanity which will ever assert itself while men are men, even when their rulers are compelling them to act as destroyers. The commander of his ship detailed him to visit a small detachment of the ship’s crew, who had been stationed on the land to raise some vegetables in the Oushakova ravine. These Russian sailors had been captured by the English and their comrade took tremendous risks in stealing his way through three picket lines at night, especially as it was “in the very hottest times of the war.” “One of my brethren found me secreted in the bush near their station and threw his arms around my neck. After enquiring for their health, I asked whether they had any food for themselves. “Oh! yes, the English send us coffee, bread and butter in the morning, and the same food they have themselves twice a day beside this.” And then they tell us, “Don’t be afraid; we won’t harm you; it is only Victoria and Nicholas who are guilty in this business.”

Mahortov was secreted during the day, and when night came he led his brethren back to the ship with remarkable success through the same dangers he had braved alone. He said, “I always served in arms under a silent protest, having a conviction that all war is wrong and I never aimed directly at the enemy.” When asked how the higher officers regarded this sort, of action, he exclaimed: “Oh! they had no time to take notice of that, but were only too glad to hide behind my back.” Once however, when master of a “top-sail” crew, who were somewhat noisy, the Captain’s mate shouted, “Come down, Mahortov,” and when he came down from the yard-arm he was ordered to take off his jacket and receive one hundred lashes; this was repeated twice on his bare back, and thus he received three hundred lashes during an hour for no neglect of duty, of which he was consciously guilty.

The patriarch teacher and his school. Photograph by Joseph Elkinton.

This dear old man gathered the children of Poterpevshe around him and taught them the hymns which form so important a part of their education. As I approached this group I thought I had never seen such an animation on the part of an instructor as Ivan Mahortov displayed as he led, corrected and praised his pupils. The well at the rear is in “Grandmother’s” yard, and serves the whole village. It was about fifty feet deep, and had a ring of ice in it fifteen feet below the top. One could but think of “the time that women go out to draw water” in the city of Nahor, as these Doukhobor women and maidens came each evening to fill their tin pails. Only the camels were lacking, and instead of the pitchers or jars balanced on their heads they carried the buckets on either end of a pole thrown over their shoulders.

Another group of children in front of a sawmill gives some idea of their faces. The logs are all sawn into slabs in this fashion.

Village children and saw mill. Photograph by Joseph Elkinton.

We soon went into conference with about one hundred delegates from the South Colony, and those of Swan River, to talk over their homestead interests. It was most interesting to see the delegates bow profoundly to the old lady.

As we went out of “Grandmother’s” door, the patriarch said, in referring to the Doukhobors’ hesitation about taking up their homesteads: “A scared hare is afraid of every stump,” and it was very appropriate to the assembled delegates.

I addressed these delegates from the porch rail, where the old patriarch stands by the side of “Grandmother” and her noble daughter, Anna Podovinnikov, with the other members of her household on either side of him. After several conferences near “Grandmother’s” house, during which it was difficult to get their signatures for any purpose, “Grandmother” said to me, through her daughter-in-law, she was sorry the delegates were so unresponsive, and she hoped I would overlook anything that might have seemed discourteous, for she and all her household were thankful for my visit, and glad to learn what I told them of Canadian law.

The Commissioner of Immigration and ex-Commissioner William F. McCreary had requested us to interpret that law to them and to bring three representative men back to Winnipeg to talk over their interests, which we did.

Saskatchewan Doukhobors. Photograph by Joseph Elkinton.

If the women in these communities could have the deciding vote, many things would be better managed, and probably all the late fanaticism would not have been heard of.

The man in his shirt sleeves at the extreme right in the photograph of “Grandmother’s” house is Ivan Podovinnikov, who lodged with Michael Sherbinin and myself during our stay in this village, and was most attentive and helpful. I cannot cease to thank him for putting me through a Russian bath – the most complete cure for a cold I ever tried.

The bathhouse, some twelve feet square, was in “Grandmother’s” yard. An antechamber, three feet wide and the width of the building, had clean straw nicely distributed on the floor. Entering the larger room one saw a neat pile of stones about two and a half feet high in the corner. These had been previously heated by a fire applied through the wall separating the two apartments, and there was no smoke. A slab three feet wide, extending the entire width of the building, was supported some five feet above the floor, as a shelf, upon which the bather was invited to lie down. Two or three cups of water were then thrown upon the hot stones, and the steam generated thereby was enough to smother or cleanse a dozen men. While immersed in this steam bath he received the best switching of his life from a bunch of birch leaves, applied so dexterously that the circulation was quickened to an incredible degree.

By taking a basin of cold water, and keeping the water constantly splashed in one’s face, I found it possible to endure this operation for ten or fifteen minutes, during which time Ivan would repeatedly look most tenderly into my face, and anxiously inquire, “Enough? enough? more? little more?” After going out to cool down on the clean straw this process was repeated once or twice, and then, with alternate dashes of cold and hot water, the patient was dismissed, and wrapped up in a warm blanket, under which he remained the rest of the night.

All the Doukhobors bathe in these houses at least once a week, and they are very clean in their personal habits. I remember speaking to some of them because their faces were fairly shining with cleanliness and glowing with color, saying, “I suppose you have been picking strawberries on the prairie all day,” and they replied, “Oh, no! we have just been in the bath.”

Before leaving this village, so full of interesting people, I took some photographs of family groups. Three out of four wished to send these “snaps” to their loved ones in Siberian exile.

Family group. Photograph by Joseph Elkinton.

One of these includes an aged mother of the exiled husband and father. The wife stands in the rear and to the left of her five daughters, who range in age from twenty to ten years of age. One of the three wore an American straw hat, which she wished her father to see.

Families of exiles, showing Persian rugs brought by them from the Caucasus. Photograph by Joseph Elkinton.

Another group shows the wife, whose husband is in exile, with her three married daughters. The Persian rugs under their feet were brought from the Caucasus.

Wife and family of a Siberian exiles. Photograph by Joseph Elkinton.

A third has six children in it, and was solicited very earnestly by them for their father. This house is a half dug-out. The crop of weeds on the roof was very luxuriant. These dug-outs were very damp and dark within, somewhat reminding one of a cave. In one village I saw a cow walk up one of these roofs and look around with apparent satisfaction.

A Doukhobor family of tpyical physique. Photograph by Joseph Elkinton.

A fourth family group of a man and his wife with two married daughters is typical for size.

“Grandmother’s” surrey. Photograph by Joseph Elkinton.

Ivan Mahortov sits in “Grandmother’s” surrey on the front seat, while the old lady and her daughter occupy the rear seat. This carriage was given to her by the Doukhobors as a special token of affection, and she insisted upon my father using it last spring, when the frost was coming out of the ground, with the result that it was broken pretty much to pieces. But when I found it in the village shed, alongside of a Deering reaper and binder, it looked as if it had never been used. I put as many girls as I could on the two seats, and asked the boys of Poterpevshe to give them a ride, which they did with great glee, bringing the surrey to Grandmothers door. She was then willing to get into it to be photographed.

Barbara Verigin and her household. Photograph by Joseph Elkinton.

The last group of five women and four children is the household of Barbara Verigin (“Grandmother’s” daughter-in-law), in the village of Besedofka. She stands with hand upon the post. This was the last Doukhobor dwelling we lodged in, and the kindness of our hostess, as well as that of all of her family, will be remembered as long as memory lasts. She was a true disciple of the Lord Jesus Christ, and her loving spirit created the atmosphere of her household. Three of her daughters-in-law were under twenty-five years of age, while the fourth – the mother of the four children – is under forty. The husband of this daughter was killed on the railroad soon after coming to America. This was a terrible blow to the family, as his father died in Siberian exile about the same time.

Whatever may be the opinions of those who do not know the virtues of these Russians by actual acquaintance, we who have had the privilege of learning of their personal experience from their own lips, and have been witnesses of their self-sacrificing devotion to a high principle, and their affection one for another, must believe in them and their future.

About seventy-five years ago the “True Inspiration Society,” a communistic society of Germans, came to America, and settled in Eastern Iowa, in five villages, numbering a few thousand souls. They have prospered wonderfully, and have become recognized as amongst the most successful and moral communities of that State. When I visited them twenty-five years ago their farming and manufacturing industries were carried on in the most approved way. We believe these Russians, who have escaped to this continent after a century of persecution, will, in another generation, prove no less prosperous.

Indeed, they have prospered remarkably already, as their comfortable homes and neat surroundings, full grain houses and numerous flocks, show. One cannot but admire their kindness to their less-favored neighbors. Time and again they have loaded up their wagons with food and clothing, and for whole days driven in search of the Galicians’ homesteads, where they thought there was suffering for want of these things.

As we were passing one of these poverty-stricken households, the mother besought me to baptize her youngest child. I tried to explain the one saving baptism of spiritual life in her soul, as best I could through my friend Michael Sherbinin, when our Doukhobor driver, who could also speak the Galician dialect, turned to her, and with tears in his eyes besought her to find the Saviour in her own heart. His whole face was radiant with the love of God as he told her that the baptism the child needed, Christ alone could bestow.

It is a scene that continually comes back to my mind as one of the most impressive I witnessed while in the Northwest Territories. We were in a farm wagon, traveling across the prairie. This Galician family had just come to settle in a house scarcely fit for cattle to occupy. The roof was made of turf, and was partly fallen in. The mother was surrounded by six or eight little children, while her husband stood at her side, apparently much discouraged by their situation. It was raining, and the mosquitoes were terrible. We stopped to exchange a few words of sympathy with them, and to leave them some money. Then it was that this poor woman appealed to me in behalf of her baby. Her face was the picture of distress for fear the child might die before it was baptized. I suppose they mistook me for a Greek priest, as I had on a Circassian goatskin cloak. Before we left her her expression was more comfortable, but such is the ignorance of these Galicians that we felt she only half comprehended our ideas of baptism.

A Day with the Doukhobors

by Jonathan E. Rhoads

On February 20, 1900, Jonathan E. Rhoads, a Quaker visitor from the United States, accompanied an immigration officer from Rosthern, Saskatchewan to the Doukhobor village of Terpeniye near the North Saskatchewan River.  His personal experiences, observations and impressions were later published in his book, “A Day with the Doukohobors” [sic] (Philadelphia: Wm H. Pile and Sons, 1900) and subsequently in the Manitoba Morning Free Press on March 1, 1902.  With superb imagery and evocative detail, the traveler describes the Doukhobors’ history, prosperity and progress, observance of Canadian law, courtesy and customs, meals, dress and industry, music, as well as their village, homes, interiors, stables and bathhouses.  In doing so, he provides the reader with a rare and fascinating first-hand account, from an impartial, outside perspective, of the Doukhobors shortly after their arrival in Canada.

Rosthern Feb. 20 — The winter dawn had not yet broken when we started through bars of lemon-colored light along the horizon and the lower rosy edges of purple-gray clouds basked towards the east, gave promise of a perfect day. Here and there among the little houses of the town could be seen an ascending column of smoke beckoning that there were others whom necessity or inclination urged to be abroad betimes, but for the most part the very houses seemed asleep. All nature had the hushed expectancy that befits the birth of new day. So rarely still was the air that the barking of a dog, at a farmhouse miles away, was distinctly audible, filtered and clarified through the frosty atmosphere. The cold had sprinkled the polished woodwork of the cutter with rime, and the team – that was matched, neither as to size, color, nor pace but was tough as whip-cord and as game as pheasants – was enveloped in the white halo of their own condensed breath. Bundling ourselves up in ample furs, we gave word and the hostler let go the team’s heads. They reared and snorted for the space of half a minute, till my companion feared the sorrel would lose his balance and fall backwards onto the cutter. Having in this approved western manner, thus indicated their nettle and spirit, they condescended at length to exhibit something of their speed, for they dashed down the street at a gait that was reminiscent of the team race at the Winnipeg Industrial, going over a couple of crossings with a back-breaking jar that was like to have dislocated one’s spinal column. After forty rods of this hippodrome racing they steadied down to a long, fast, swinging trot, the “proputty” “proputty” of their feet making music on the bare frozen roads. When, in a few minutes, the little town was left behind, and the broad prairie stretched before us, the dominant note changed to the banging of the runners as they struck some lump on the snow-trail and the noise of the team’s hoofs changed to a quick crunching pattern.

There were two of us, the immigration officer and myself. We were up in Saskatchewan, in the gore of country, between the two forks of the mighty river that gave the territory its name. It is a new country, ten years ago the undisturbed home of the fox and the Indian. Five summers ago there was nothing to see of the hustling little town of Rosthern we had just left. The long grading of the railway that swung in a shallow curve northward from Regina, and the naked telegraph poles, were the only objects that broke the monotony of the, except the water tank that could be seen above the scrubby timber growth that covered the site of the town. On still mornings the beaver colonies could be seen at work in the little streams that flowed into the Saskatchewan. The long lines of freight trains were sometimes visible winding their way over the prairie trails, bringing peltries from the western fur, or returning thither with the season’s supplies. In the spring, there were no squares of black plowing that marked where the husbandman had begun to subdue to the needs of mankind the fertile soil of this part of the Canadian Northwest, and in the autumn the click of the binder would have been listened for in vain. But, although it is still a new country, it has undergone a transformation. It is dotted with homesteads and diapered with fields. Comfortable, if not pretentious homes can be seen on every hand. Commodious barns and outbuildings attest the thrift and the thoroughness of the men who have selected the spot for their home. If luxury and style are conspicuous by their absence, so also is poverty, and the sense of hopeless acquiescence in misfortune that too often accompanies it. The poorest settler is rich in hope and the sublime confidence in the future of the locality, which is one of the characteristics of the west. He knows that a wise investment of skilful labor will, with favoring seasons and fertile soil, in a few years put him in an enviable position of competence, and the knowledge makes him feel the peer of any, and serves to stimulate him to more strenuous endeavor.

A Prospering District

We had nearly thirty miles to travel before we could reach our destination, for we were going straight west to the further bank of the north fork of the Saskatchewan. The intervening country varied little, if at all, from the average of Canadian prairie. Shallow hollows alternated with rolling crests, much of it covered with poplar and willow saplings, the tender green and brown of which made, with the dazzling snow, a color scheme beautiful in its harmony. An occasional twisted, gnarled oak, whose stunted deformity proclaimed its proximity to the polar limit of its growth, was almost the only variant to the tree life of the plain. The land was nearly all upland in character, few if any hay meadows being passed on the way. Each few miles could be seen the neat outbuildings erected by the Territorial government to protect the well bored for public use. The material progress of the settlement was illustrated and epitomized on nearly every farm. The original “shack” in which the settler first lived could be seen abandoned – to the use of the hens. Next in the scale of progression came the little log house, which, when continued success had warranted the erection of a neat frame dwelling, was regaled to use as a granary or implement shed. In some few cases a further advance had been made and a commodious brick dwelling evidenced the financial well being of the farmer. A number of windmills could also be seen affording fresh testimony of the district’s advance in material prosperity.

My companion beguiled the way by narrating instances of the improvement in the condition of the settlers and the district, as suggested by the various houses we passed. Yonder house with the big barn was So-and-So’s place. He came here in ‘96 and made enough money to pay his homestead fee. That was his herd over here by the straw-stack – over twenty of them and he had sold six or seven this fall. That place with the windmill belonged to a man who came here from Germany four years ago. He had $600. Now he has three-quarters of a section of land, all the implements he needs, three as fine working teams could be found in the Territories, good framed house and all necessary conveniences and in his granary 4,500 bushels of wheat. In yonder little house lived a Swede. He had nothing when he came out in ‘98. He worked on the section and at threshing and did his homestead duties cultivated this farm at the intervals between other work. There he was hauling cordwood to Rosthern, with his ox team. In five years’ time he would be as prosperous as any farmer around. All of them, three or four years since, were in the same condition that he was today. And, with countless iteration, and some slight variations in the individual instances, the story was the same – that of competence and comfort having been extracted from the fertile soil of the Canadian prairie.

After a time settlement grew sparser. As the river was approached the homesteads grew more and more scattered, and sometimes a house was not in sight in any direction. Far to the north rose the graceful outlines of the Blue-Hills, a golden saffron where the morning light caught their snow-clad sides, the belts of timber of their base showing wonderful seal brown colorings, and the shadowed scaurs and ravines intersecting them blue with the blueness of a June sky. Closer at hand could be seen the mile-wide valley trenched out by the Saskatchewan, and between the fringing zones of birch, elm, and poplar ran a snowy riband, marking the course of the great river. When we approached the crest of the bank, and stopped to breathe our team before negotiating the precipitous descent, we looked on a scene that was worth coming far to see – a panorama combining many of the elements of pastoral beauty.

A Perilous Passage

But a few moments could be allowed for the contemplation of the scenery, for the crossing of the valley was a proposition demanding present and practical solution. Of trail there was scarce semblance. For three hundred feet our path lay down a slope as steep and as smooth as a toboggan slide. At its foot were a few willow scrub, and then came a clear drop of fifty or sixty feet. If the team became unmanageable, and could not be stopped at the foot of the slide, the prospect of the drop beyond was not reassuring. However, two miles away, against the skyline on the opposite bank was the Doukhobor village of Terpennie we had driven near thirty miles to see, and one of us, at least, did not propose to turn back after coming so far. The interpreter said he would walk down, so as to lighten the load and pilot the way. He started slowly and cautiously, but soon the slope and his weight increased his speed. His feet twinkled faster and faster through the powdery snow, that rose up and enveloped him waist high, like a halo, above which his rotund body and gesticulating arms could be seen as he rushed to what seemed almost certain destruction. But Providence, in the shape of the aforementioned willow bushes, interposed, and he crashed into their interposing boughs, and fell, a portly, breathless heap of humanity, among their protected branches. Next it was my turn. I grasped the lines short, braced myself against the foot rail, and chirrupped to the team. But neither of them exhibited the slightest inclination to proceed. The sorrel was particularly rebellious, and plunged and reared on the edge of the steep in a most nerve -racking fashion. Finally, with delicate little steps and snorts of fear, they were persuaded to essay the descent.

Until a little more than half way down, all went well. Then one of them slipped, and in a second cutter and team were slithering down, the former on their haunches. Down below I could see my companion scramble with frantic haste out of our line of descent. His plump figure could be seen through the blinding snow-mist raised by the horses, crashing through the underbrush with an agility out of the proportion to his weight. At the foot of the hill I partly succeeded in pulling the team to the left, thus avoiding the sheer drop ahead, and giving the horses an opportunity of catching their feet. The thin, limber willow twigs sang like whips as, bowing my head and straining on the lines, we dashed into the brush. There was a moment’s wild rush, then a plunge, and a bump, and the cutter was still – jammed against a tree stump whose top was covered with snow. The horses shook themselves, gave a snort or two and then the brown proceeded nonchalantly to help himself to some outcropping tufts of slough grass. Neither of the team had a scratch, and no injury was apparent to the cutter. My companion “lost his English” as he described the slide and went off into German and Russian and Polish and Magyar in recounting its incidents. Only one difficult place remained to be negotiated – where a small stream from a ravine flowed across the track. One of the horses fell while being led over the glair ice and had to be dragged across. But with the exercise of care that the whiffletrees did not strike any stumps, we wound our way down the valley, and on to the ice-bound, snow-covered Saskatchewan.

Doukhobor Courtesy

Across this noble river, nearly thrice as wide as the Red at Winnipeg, we went diagonally upstream, skirting an island nearly in its centre – on the farther side of which we could see a yawning black slit in the river’s snowy mantle, where the swift, inky current boiled over its rocky bed. Up stream a little ravine wound upward from the river affording an easy natural gradient, by which to gain the general level. Halfway up we met a party of five Doukhobors – grave, deliberate men, large of stature, slow of speech, with an unaffected natural courtesy, both simple and dignified. We reined up that my companion might speak, and one of them, with whom he was acquainted, introduced us to the four. Each, as his name was mentioned, lifted his heavy black fur cap and bowed. They told us the village was half a mile from the top of the ravine, and that they were on their way to cut some logs for building next spring. They had been cutting ever since they came off the section when it froze up. They would float some of the logs down in the spring, but those that were nearer were being hauled in by the oxen. They lifted their hats again and bowed as we drove on. “Talk about French politeness,” said my companion, “it’s not in it with the courtesy of these people.” They raise their hats whenever they meet each other, and differ from Frenchmen in that they are quite as polite to their own people as they are to strangers. I’ve traveled a great deal, and never saw such genuine simplicity and courtesy. Wait till you get to the village and you’ll see that all I’ve said is true.

We were now almost at the point where the ravine opened out on the general level. A good trail led all the way to the village, which could be plainly seen a short distance ahead. We passed two yokes of oxen, hitched one ahead of the other, hauling some building logs, slug under the axels of a wagon. The logs were fully forty feet long – so long that chains had to be substituted for the usual wagon reach. The oxen were in the very pink of condition, and swung their heads with their legs as they contentedly rolled along, chewing their cud. The men lifted their caps and hailed us in Russian, to which the interpreter replied, and a few minutes afterwards we drove into the village.

Doukhobor house, Saskatchewan Colony, c. 1902. Glenbow Archives NA-949-103.

The Village of Terpennie

The impression it made at first sight was odd and prepossessing. Outside the Doukhobor communities, the like is not to be seen elsewhere in the Canadian west. Imagine a street half as broad again as Main street, Winnipeg, lined on each side with long low yellow buildings, roofed with sod or thatch. The gable end of each of these is towards the road, from which it is separated by a neatly railed garden. Each building – they are from fifty to sixty feet long – is divided into almost equal parts by a door admitting into an inner porch. Doors at opposite ends of this admit, the one towards the road to the dwelling house, and the one remote to it to the stable. The buildings are all one story high, though a small window in the gable showed that the upper portion is used, presumably for purposes of storage. The walls of all the buildings are of immense thickness, and have a pleasing chrome tint. They have almost as smooth and finished an appearance as the best plaster work of a Canadian artisan. The sod roofs are laid with the care and almost regularity, of shingles. The yard at the side of the buildings is swept clean and free from dust, chips, and other debris– indeed the first person we saw in the village was a woman sweeping the snow covered yard. It reminded one of the Dutch cleanliness that scrubs the very roadways.

Hardly had our team come to a standstill before a dozen of the villagers came hurrying forward to proffer assistance in unhitching and stabling the horses. The men doffed their caps, as they advanced with ceremonious politeness and the women crossed their arms over their breasts and bowed, accompanying the movement with a quick intake of breath, similar to that given by a Japanese when accosting an acquaintance. All the men were of good physical type, indeed most of them were splendidly built. The deputy headman of the village, who came in the absence of the chief, to invite us to his house, was a magnificent specimen of manhood. Considerably over six feet in height, broad of shoulder and deep of chest, he would have made no mean antagonist in any competition demanding strength and staying power. The women were not nearly as well built. They were all comparatively shorter than the men, stockily and sturdily built, but lacking in any natural grace or charm. Their faces at about the same age were very similar – indeed, they all seemed to have been turned out of the same mould, being round and with little or no play of feature. Their lips were full, their noses short, almost snubby, their eyes set wide apart, and lack-luster and expressionless. The girls and young women were thick of waist and ankle, and like the men, slow, almost ponderous in their movement. The older women were shapeless as ill-tied-up bundles and their skins were of a color like parchment and seamed with innumerable wrinkles.

The Home and Stable

These observations were made as I stood watching a half-dozen lads un-harness the team. They were led through the same door from which the headman had emerged to welcome us, but instead of turning to the left – to the portion of the building occupied by himself and family – they were taken to the other end, used as a stable. We followed them in to assure ourselves of their good treatment. It was almost dark for two panes of glass, each not a foot square, were the only means of lighting it. But barring the darkness and the lack of ventilation, the building was as comfortable as any stockman could desire. The walls – of turf thirty inches plastered within and without made the warmest of stables.

The stalls were neatly divided by peeled pole partitions, and the mangers were similarly constructed. Bedded comfortably on straw were three milk cows, five or six young stock and a fine team of oxen. All were in the very pink of condition and, in fact, they seemed fit for either the show-ring or the butcher.

This duty to the team performed, we crossed the inner hall into the living room. As we entered, the headman took off his hat in welcoming salutation – replacing it a moment afterwards – and his wife, daughter and daughter-in-law bowed. They led us to the store, where after divesting ourselves of our fur coats and while warming ourselves, we had the opportunity of inspecting the interior arrangements of a Doukhobor home.

The room was about fourteen broad and twenty feet in length. Its floor was of earth, packed smooth and hard as though made of boards. The walls were smoothly plastered and neatly whitewashed. Two windows, each about three feet square supplied the apartment with light. The sashes, being set almost flush with the outside of the thick turf wall, gave window ledges fully two feet in breadth on the inside, and on these were a number of house plants, thrifty and carefully tended and evidently much prized. Among them were two that had been brought all the way from Batoum on the Black Sea.

A Doukhobor Interior

The principal object in the room was the large stove and oven, built in the corner at the right of the entrance. It was about seven feet square, made, as was the building, of plaster. It was constructed on somewhat the same lines as a baker’s oven, the heat from the firebox passing directly into the oven, heating the plaster floor and roof to the necessary temperature for baking, the fire being raked out to prevent the smoking of the articles to be cooked before the latter were put in. The heat absorbed and retained by the thick plaster will maintain the oven at the proper baking heat for hours. The top of the oven is about six feet high, and the space intervening between it and the roof – about four feet – is often used in winter as a bed place. While not as soft and yielding to the body as springs and mattresses, no exception could be taken to its warmth on a cold winter night. At the side of the oven were three square chambers – cupboards without doors – built into its sides. They were each about a foot square, and of about the same depth. In them were piled socks, mitts, and similar articles to dry. One corner of the oven was built up almost to the roof. It also contained a hot air chamber. An ordinary American stovepipe carried off the smoke.

Around three sides of the room ran a bench. On the sides opposite the stove and the entrance it was of thick planed plank, supported by stout legs and scrubbed to a spotless cleanliness. But on the other side the bench was continued flush with the front of the stove, and completely filled the broad space between it and the opposite end of the room. It thus formed a broad shelf, from twelve to fourteen feet in length, and more than six feet in width. The boards were polished a dark brown by constant use. This shelf was the family sleeping place. There was ample room for two parties of sleepers on this shelf. The bed clothing – beautifully made and spotlessly clean – was neatly rolled in a big bundle. Here slept the headman and his wife, and his sixteen year old daughter.

While inspecting the sleeping arrangements, the headman took us out to the hall again and showed us the apartment of his married son. It was a tiny room, not more than nine by six feet, in which there was hardly room for a small bed, a huge chest and a tiny box stove. Like the general living room, the interior was neatly white-washed, and kept spotlessly clean. A shelf or two contained a few domestic treasures and articles of feminine use and adornment. The bed linen was carefully rolled up at the one end of the bed, as was the case in the general room. The floor, too, was of packed earth, as in the other instance.

The Doukhobors, like all continental peoples, are fond of pictures. Highly colored religious lithographs oleographs of German and Russian production hung about the walls, and were evidently not among the least prized of the room’s furnishings. These formed a striking contrast with the calendars issued by the Rosthern merchants, which divided the honors with them. In one house, I saw a reproduction of Raphael’s Madonna del Sista, and overlapping it was a picture of an excited Irishwoman belaboring a bawling donkey that had stopped on the track in front of an approaching train.

Almost equally startling contrasts could be met with wherever the eye looked. The east and the west met here. On the wall could be seen the Russian counting machine, – a light frame with variously colored wooden beads, strung on wire, almost identical with that used by primary teachers in number lessons. It came to Russia, hundreds of years ago, and is a modification of the Chinese machine, the earliest denary system of mathematics known. The headman said he was now able to calculate, without the aid of the machine, though he was much faster with it. At the interpreter’s request, he went through some lightning calculations with the instrument, performing not only additions and subtractions, multiplications, with a rapidity that would move many an accountant to envy. On the bare bed-bench could be seen a spinning-wheel, antique and quaint in shape, that suggested memoirs of the fair Marguerite. In sharp contrast with these old-world relics were the American alarm clocks, ticking against the wall, and the modern cheap stove, used to heat the apartment – for the big oven was used almost wholly for baking.

The Doukhobor’s History

We set down on the edge of the bed-bench and talked to the head man. He told us his name was Jacob Iwachin (Ewashen) and that he came out with the first migration to Canada. He told us somewhat of the disabilities and privations they had suffered while in Russia. “According to our religion,” said he, “we may not lift arms. We could not with conscience enter military service to fight. But we told the Russian government that we would do anything for the nation’s service except fight. They told us we could go into the forestry branch, which is part of the army services, and this we willingly did, and for years we served the term of our conscription in planting and caring for the thousands of acres of trees set out by the Russian government. But after a time – in the reign of the last Nicholas – they tried to compel us to carry guns, and because we would not, they said we were not good Russians. And they drove us from our farms, and harried us like the partridges on the mountains. They imprisoned the men and ill-treated our women. They burned our homes and drove us down towards the Caucasus in winter. There many of our little children died of cold and exposure. But God looked down, and He is just, and in the spring we built and tilled, and sowed, and the good God gave us a good harvest from soil that had never yielded well before. And in a few years we had made homes in our new place, and then the government sent the Cossacks on us again. They took our crops, our cattle, our money, and all that we had. They burned our houses. Some of our leading men they drove into exile. Many were sent to the salt mines and lead mines of Siberia. The prisons were full of men whose only crime was that they refused to learn to slay their brethren. My brother is in Siberia – at a salt mine in Irkutsk. He has been there eighteen years, and nothing can de done to get him out. He will die there, exiled and martyred. He was a teacher, and because the people loved him, and he made many believe as he did, they took him from his wife and his baby and made him walk for months chained to a felon, and buried him alive in a mine. Will not God judge these men? Yes, surely He will, and He will give us and him strength to bear our sorrow.” And the man lifted his cap, and bowed his head in silent prayer for the brother in his living death, while his wife sobbed quietly as she rocked herself on a low stool. His simple eloquence, though it may have lost much in translation, was very affecting. His voice vibrated with a wonderful resonance as he spoke of the sufferings of his people.

His fine, impressive and picturesque presence, and the natural grace and dignity of his gestures, were very striking. In a little time he resumed: “We did all we could. We told the government we would do anything except learn to fight. I do not think the Tsar knew how his officers were treating us. We hear he is kind and hates war. We sent him letters and petitions but he took no notice, I do not think his officers gave them to him. And all the time the cruelty of the Cossacks went on. But the good God gave most of us strength to hope and endure, though it was very dark. And at last the heart of the Tsarina was moved at our sufferings. One of the petitions reached her, and she spoke on our behalf. We had heard of America, that there men may worship God as they please, and we asked to go there, where we would not vex the Russian government. And the good Tsarina got for us leave to go. She sent her messengers to us with the good news, and we knew that God had pity on our sufferings. They promised us that the government would buy our farms, and that men would be sent to value them. And we got ready with joyful hearts, for the day of our deliverance drew near. The evaluators came and they said the government would give us $165,000 for our farm buildings. They would give us nothing for the land, and the buildings were worth much more, but we made no complaint. They said we should have the money when we got to Batoum. We got there, but the money did not come. We waited two weeks and sent messages, but still it did not come. We could have sold the houses and barns for more than this, if we had broken them up, but the government meant to prevent us going. One ship had sailed, and the captains would not wait, and we heard that the government meant to prevent us going after all, so we sailed and left it, and we have not received it yet. The people of the villages around Rosthern should have got $32,000 of this money if the government had sent it.”

Contented With Canada

“And so you are glad you came to Canada?” asked the interpreter. “We are all very glad,” answered Iwachin, brightening at the change of subject, and speaking earnestly and impressively. “We cannot tell you how glad. We appreciate the freedom here very much. Yes, this is the place. There is no comparison between this and Russia. All the people have been most kind, and we cannot tell you how grateful we are. We are trying to serve the government, and the country, and God. We shall be very happy here. We will work hard, and the good God will prosper us.

Our conversation as to the past history of the sect was interrupted by the entrance of another Doukhobor, whose incoming was marked by the same ceremonious salutations that had greeted ourselves. Soon afterwards the good wife announced that the meal was ready, and the four men – Iwachin, the newcomer, who rejoiced in the name of Kusnizoff (Kooznetsoff), the interpreter and myself, sat down at the table, which was placed in the corner of the room so as to utilize the benches along two of its sides. The wife waited on us, and the daughter and daughter-in-law sat on the bench – which was so high that their feet were six inches above the floor – and knitted.

A Doukhobor Meal

The table was covered with a coarse clean linen cloth. At one end and one side were placed two finer linen towels, each about six feet long and as broad as a pocket handkerchief. They were ruched or ruffled along the edge of the table, and their purpose I was at a loss to conceive, till the interpreter took one end and placed the other across my knees, when I perceived it was to be used as a napkin or serviette. Evidently the theory of communism obtained even in so small a matter as dinner appointments. Plates – one of them ordinary white heavy ironstone china, the others of quaintly decorated Russian ware, were placed on the inside of the ruffled napkins, but of knife or fork there was never a sign.

Doukhobor village gathering, Saskatchewan Colony, c. 1902.

The goodwife brought up a dish of well cooked potatoes, fried in butter. Fortunately there was a spoon, so that we could help ourselves by that means, but it was evident that fingers were to take precedence over forks. We helped ourselves to the potatoes, and Iwachin cut me off a chunk of bread from the big loaf, and Kusnizoff performed a similar office for the interpreter. There was an abundance of excellent butter, and this, with a bowl of loaf sugar, and tumblers of scalding hot and strong tea formed the meal. The two Doukhobors picked the potatoes from their plates with a neatness and daintiness that neither myself nor the interpreter could hope to emulate, but the long drive in the keen winter air had given me an excellent appetite, and I contrived to do ample justice to the simple fare. The bread was the worst item of the menu. It was very dark in color – about the shade of tobacco – and sour and bitter to the taste. It is ground, “forthright,” in their own mill, and is made from a mixture of wheat, barley, and rye. Its composition probably accounted for the breads color, but nothing could excuse its sodden, sour heaviness. The “flapjacks” of the most unskillful tenderfoot that ever “batched” on the prairie were culinary triumphs by comparison. The wonder is, that with so small a variety of food, and that so badly cooked – for the Doukhobors are strict vegetarians, eating fish, but never meat – that they are such splendidly developed types of manhood.

The goodwife did not use a teapot in pouring the tea, but a samovar, or Russian tea urn, and, as stated above, it was drunk from tumblers instead of cups. All the Doukhobors have sweet teeth, and both Iwachin and Kusnizoff frequently took a lump of sugar from the bowl, and ate it as a relish with the bread. They did not spread the butter on their bread either, but helped their plates with their jack-knives, and ate it with them in the same manner as we would cheese. The meal was preceded and concluded by a grace devoutly said, and Iwachin, despite the differences between his and our code of table manners, presided as host with an urbanity, kindliness, and courtliness that could not have been exceeded. His conversation showed him to be a man of keen observation and shrewd intelligence. He understood thoroughly the theory of representative government as it exists in Canada, and showed himself familiar with the machinery of municipal government. He took a live interest in the education of his people, and made many enquiries as to how the government proposed to deal with this important question.

He told me of the work of Mr. Scherbenin, in Hierolofka (Horelovka), an adjoining village. Mr. Scherbenin is a disciple of Tolstoi, and, though a Russian or rank, and with influential friends and with an education and ability that would have ensured him a brilliant career in the Russian diplomatic or military service, renounced all for conscience sake, and threw in his lot with these simple, brave, patient people. His home in Hierolofka is distinguished from those of the other villagers only in the number of its books and the presence of many scientific instruments. He can make himself understood in every European tongue, and speaks, reads and writes eleven languages with native facility. Yet he walled and plastered his own clay dwelling, and lives the simple communal life of these peasantry as though he had never known a superior station. He has established a school and teaches daily, in addition to primary subjects, the communal theology of Tolstoi, the Canadian system of municipal and federal government, western methods of agriculture and the usages of mercantile business. By virtue of his blameless life and his wide knowledge, he is the arbiter and oracle and final court of appeal to these unlettered folk, who regard him with feelings nearly akin to veneration.

The headman wanted to know if they could not have a teacher who could speak both English and Russian located in every village. He said they were as yet poor, but they would soon be able to pay him well. All were anxious to learn English, but how could they when there was none to teach? Both Kusnizoff and Iwachin frequently asked the interpreter and myself for the English names of some of the things about the house and farm, and would repeat them with the proud satisfaction of a child that has learned a new word, repeating it, with explanatory phrases in Russian, to his wife and daughters, and using the new term on every possible occasion, in order to memorize it. Among their other enquiries were many as to the possibility of securing from the Russian government the money due from the sale of their buildings, of which they had been defrauded.

The Doukhobor’s Dress

The dress of the men differ little from that of the familiar type of Doukhobor seen on the streets of Winnipeg. For outdoor wear, Kusnizoff had a coat of sheepskin, double-breasted and with the pelt outside, with wide flowing skirts, and a cap of Russian military style. Below this was a sort of blouse – a kind of vest with sleeves, something like a stable-man’s jacket – full pantaloons, tucked into heavy knee boots. Iwachin’s garb was similar, excepting that his blouse was somewhat more decorated with embroidery, and that his big overcoat was dyed black. All these garments, including the boots, were made by the Doukhobors themselves.

The three women of Iwachin’s household also wore the characteristic national dress. The mother wore a blouse of curious cut, of woolen material, in a color a sort of washed-out electric blue, and a short woolen skirt, much heavier and coarser in weave, and striped red and white in the direction of its length. Coarsely knitted and warm grey stockings were visible below this, and strong roughly made and heavy boots completed the exterior portion of her attire, with the exception of the peculiar cap of Liberty worn by the patriots of the French Revolution. The cap is generally ornamented with a rosette or red, and its top decorated with a tuft of the same color. The daughter was dressed in the same general style as the elder woman, except that the apron and trimmings were of a brighter color. The garments of her sister-in-law were beautifully embroidered in colors, and were finished with more attention to the niceties of appearance than was the case with the other two women of the household. All wore boots as heavy as those of a British farm laborer, and, as was to be expected, their walk was clumsy and heavy as that of men broken down from excess of hard physical labor. None of the women of the village were equal in physique to the average of the men. Few were more than five feet three in height, but all appeared strong and inured to work. Of the nearly two hundred people inhabiting the village, I saw no variation in the type of women, all being short, thick of waist and ankle, with round faces and full, expressionless features.

Beautiful Weaving

During the meal, I had admired the beautiful decorative work done by the needle on the garments of the daughter-in-law, and at its conclusion the woman of the house displayed specimens of their weaving, dyeing, and embroidery. The articles they exhibited were both useful and ornamental in character. Some of the weaving was particularly fine, the texture of some of the table linen being equal to that produced by the best looms of Belfast. Nearly all the linen was woven with a simple check or diaper pattern in red at the side and ends, and much taste and skill were shown in the arrangement of these. The dark woolen cloth, of which the women’s skirts were made, much resembled Irish frieze. The clothes of the men were made of similar material, but generally lighter in color. Some of the kerchiefs worn by the women were beautifully embroidered in fine wools, work being as well executed as the most captious critic of art needle work could desire, the design being usually regular or geometric, and almost ecclesiastic in simplicity and harmony. The knitting shown me by the daughter-in-law, was as fine as that of the famous Shetland shawls, and of the same gossamery quality. The staple colors for woven fabrics seemed to be browns, fawns, and grays, but in knitted work, and in the more decorative portions of the good intended for personal wear, brilliant coloring is general. The dyeing, the spinning and the weaving are all done by the community. The yarn is spun on the old-fashioned distaff. For the dyeing aniline dyes are coming into general use, and I saw the communal loom, – in sections, for it was not yet put together, and had not been used since the village was founded. It was a primitive wooden arrangement, that would look curiously archaic besides the modern mechanical marvels that fabricate the textiles in general use, but its effectiveness when operated skillfully was beyond question.

When we had finished examining and admiring the work of the women, Iwachin signified through the interpreter his wish that we should see his treasures – to wit, his library. From under the sitting bench running around two sides of the room he produced a box, eighteen inches in length, and a foot in height and breadth. It was as solidly constructed as a treasure chest. It was clamped at the corners with quaintly shaped forgings. Its lock was nearly as massive as that of an English cathedral, and the key was fully six inches long in length and was as beautiful as it was heavy. When the lid was thrown back, the family library could be seen.

Four books bound richly in leather, the bindings beautifully tooled and chased, two of them brass bound at the corners in the way that Bibles used to be, a McCormick catalogue, and half a dozen pamphlets or tracts, completed the catalogue. Iwachin handled them lovingly, and “read aloud a passage or two from the Bible, which was printed – as, indeed, were all with the exception of the implement booklet, – in the Russian character. Kusnizoff could not read, – he said he would learn to read in English, not Russian – but Iwachin read, to us some Christian communal theories from a pamphlet by Tolstoi, for whom, in common with all of his race and religion, he had the highest reverence, as the embodiment of all the personal and public virtues. He told the interpreter that when he learned to speak English – he had just started and learning it was slow, because he was not often in town, and it was very seldom that anyone speaking English came to the village – he would learn to read in English, for he wanted to find out about Canadian government, and Canadian usages, and Canadian history, and these things he knew he could learn by reading books and newspapers. But he thought it would take much trouble, and time, and patience to read the English characters. “The Russian letters,” he said, “are easy to read; not so the English.” I told him it was all a matter of use, whereat he laughed assertingly, displaying as he did so strong, glistening and regular teeth.

A Doukhobor Concert

During the meal Iwachin had promised to get in some of the villagers to sing, and while we had been looking at the books, and our host had been expressing his appreciation of the difficulty and intricacy of the English tongue, they had been coming in by ones and twos. The ceremonious kindliness which had greeted our arrival had marked the greeting given to each newcomer. Each had been formally presented to the interpreter and myself and the men had taken off their caps with a magnificent sweep, and bowed in the Russian manner, and then had shaken hands in the British fashion. The women had bobbed in the “charity curtsey”, and had then betaken themselves to the edge of the bed-bench where their strongly shod feet hung a foot above the earthen floor. There were eight of them in all, short, thickset, sturdy figures, and in their curious head dresses,, their braided over-jackets and brilliantly embroidered aprons of red, green or blue, they formed a picturesque party. The men sat together about the table, and chatted freely with each other in the interval preceding the commencement of the music, but the women said never a word, but sat mute, with downcast eyes, till Iwachin signified the concert might begin. Kusnizoff acted as precentor. He had a reedy but not inharmonious tenor voice, and was evidently the musical authority of the village. Iwachin explained to us that they would sing principally hymns and psalms. He seemed somewhat apologetic about it, and explained that they could sing songs but thought it better not, as there were some young girls present. The explanation mystified us somewhat, as these grave and God-fearing people seemed the most unlikely to sing anything comic or risqué. So I merely said that I sung psalms in metre myself every Sabbath morning in church – for my Presbyterian pastor was not present to controvert my statement as to my regularity in attendance – and settled down to an enjoyment of the musical programme. There was a moment’s silence, and then Kusnizoff’s quavering voice could be heard, “feeling” after the notes as if uncertain of the key, but singing truer and fuller after the second bar. The others joined with voices of varying sweetness and power in a rude and effective harmony.

The music was very slow and mournful in character, and it was all in the minor, many of the intervals and phrases having an almost weird effect. All the voices were nasal in quality, but though the singing would have offended every canon of musical criticism, the combined result was far from unpleasing. In general the men and women sang in unison though occasionally Iwachin, who possessed a rich rough baritone, dropped into harmony, and his wife, whose voice was a pure and strong alto, frequently attempted a part. The women all sang with downcast head, and without any expression whatever, whether facial or musical, but the men seemed to enter much more fully into the spirit of the music, and sang as if they realized the significance of the selections. It was a “Song of Deliverance” Iwachin told the interpreter, though a more mournful poem of praise it had never been my lot to hear. If this weird air symbolized musically the Doukhobor sense of joy, it would keep the imagination working overtime to conceive the solemnity of a Doukhobor dirge.

After I had praised their rendition of this song, they proceeded to give a metrical psalm. It was a curious composition from a musical point of view, being a sort of choral fugue, the harmony being made by the repetition of parts, in the same manner as the rounds or catches we used to sing at college. Like the preceding song, it was in the minor, and in the frequent and disorderly crossing of parts, the irregularity of its measure, and the oddness of its intervals, it came near to being a complete realization of musical chaos. In its formlessness it suggested remotely, the overture in Haydn’s “Creation.” Next they sung something that was much more cheerful – something that had unexpected slurs and yodels, and was brighter, if more barbaric. Every verse or section was started, solus by Kusnizoff, the others not joining in till the second or third bar. Each verse was completed with an unpleasant flattening of its concluding tone, and an accentuation of the nasal quality of the voice, and the note would be chopped off with a clock by the chorus, the precentor, apparently by virtue of his office, prolonging the note for a noticeable interval after the others were silent.

Kusnizoff seemed delighted at my praise of the singing and exhibited almost childish pleasure when I told him that never, in all the concerts I had attended in Europe and America, had I heard music similar to that which they were entertaining us. After four or five selections had been sung, I asked them to sing the only Russian air I knew: “Long live the Tsar,” the Russian nation anthem, the air of which is similar to most in the hymn, “God the All-Terrible.” My request, when interpreted, was discussed with some animation, but finally Iwachin explained that, when they thought of all that the Russian government had made them endure, they could not sing the anthem. They were not Russians now, he said; they had come out to Canada to serve God and to be Canadians, and as soon as they knew enough of the language they would sing the Canadian national hymn. He requested me to sing for their entertainment, and was politely skeptical when I said that nothing but considerations of friendship and the desire for their continued good opinion prevented my compliance.

Doukhobor house, Saskatchewan Colony, c. 1902. Glenbow Archives NA-949-102.

The musical programme must have taken considerably more than half an hour, and in all that time the women maintained their attitude of listless stolidity. The only exception was a little girl of some ten or twelve years of age, who sang but little, but who peered shyly around the edge of the stovepipe at me and to whom I doubtless appeared as strange as would a visitor from Mars.

A Stroll Through the Village

After I had formally thanked them for their music, and Kuznizoff had made a florid speech in reply thereto, Iwachin suggested that we should stroll through the village. The women, on leaving, dropped Iwachin, his wife, the interpreter and myself each one of their bobbing curtsies, and the men lifted their hats with the with the wide-spreading sweep of a Russian military salute as they departed.

The village consisted of but one long street. It ran in a straight line, and was about a hundred and fifty feet in breadth. It was neatly fenced with rails on either side, and the buildings were all arranged with their gable end to the road. All were built on the same general plan as that of Iwachin’s – with a middle entry, the dwelling portion nearest the road, and the stable in the other end of the building. Occasionally a pole fence could be seen running back from the road to the depth of the lot, but in general there was no division between the communal properties. At the rear of every stable were one or more fine stacks of well cured hay, some of the villagers having as much as fifty tons. We went into several of the stables and saw the cattle. All were in the very pink of condition, fit, indeed for the butcher. In every yard was a building used as a granary. Its construction was in every case as careful as that of the dwelling house, the walls having well built “footings” and being carefully plastered and neatly whitewashed. Built against the granary in almost every instance was a lean-to implement shed, well stocked with binders – a McCormick in every instance – harness, plows, mowers, rakes and every necessary agricultural implement. Out in the yard were to be seen wagons and sleighs. The hayracks were carefully put on platforms ready to be put on. About the whole village was an air of method, of care, of cleanliness and of order that would compare favorably with that of many a Canadian homestead. The care of their possessions was evidenced on every hand. Inside the implement sheds I found the binder canvasses carefully rolled away, and even the irons of their planes had been greased to protect them from rust!

Further Evidence of Prosperity

All the granaries had more or less grain in them. One man had 600 bushels of wheat, 1,100 bushels of barley and 400 bushels of oats. Another had 830 bushels of wheat and 600 bushels of oats and barley, and many others seemed to have almost, if not quite, equal amounts of grain, though I did not enquire the exact quantities in other than these two instances. Semen Chernoff, whose grain crop is the one last mentioned, told me many interesting facts through the interpreter. From him I gathered that the communal system is losing many of its adherents, and is rapidly being replaced by the rights of the Individual. He was a tall, ungainly fellow, black of eye and torrential of speech. Evidently he had become seized of the fact that an individual’s value to a community is in direct ratio to his ability as a worker. “My three sons,” said he, “worked on the section last summer. They worked hard for six months. They came home with $500. They put the money into the village treasury. Sherbinnen’s two sons went away with mine and came back with them. They worked on the same section. They put into the treasury only $180. Next summer my boys go on the section again, but they will not put their money into the treasury. Oh, no! They will buy cattle and plows with it for themselves. Is it right in the eyes of the good God that my boys should each turn in twice as much as has his?”

Volumes of political economy could not have stated the case of the individual as against the community with greater brevity or force. Nor was this the only instance that came under my observation during my stay of the loosening hold the Doukhobors have upon communistic theories. At first they would not agree to make entry for their homestead lands individually, but wanted the Interior Department to transfer the land en bloc, after the performance of the necessary duties by the community. This, of course, the Department refused to do, insisting on the carrying out of the departmental regulations in the matter of individual entry and individual performance of homestead duties. For more than a year the matter was debated between the government and the Doukhobors, but, as far as the Rosthern settlement is concerned, the matter is settled. The settlers have acceded in every particular to the regulations of the Department, and six months ago land was entered for individually by almost every male of required age in Terpennie. While I was there, I made out the necessary receipts for the $10.00 homestead fees for four men, the money being paid to the interpreter, as an official of the Department. As an indication of the rapidly increasing prosperity of the settlement, they are buying land in large quantities nearly every homesteader wanting to enlarge his holdings by purchase. Chernoff, Iwachin, Kusnizoff and Popoff all wanted me to make influence with the Interior Department, in order that they might select government land for purchase near them. At present the government refuses to sell any of this land, for the reason that the railway grants have not been selected by the companies. With the rapid influx of settlement into the Rosthern country, they fear that others may secure the lands when they are thrown open for sale, though, by right of longer residence and repeated applications to purchase, they feel they have a priority of claim.

Observance of Canadian Law

But the most significant sign of the increasing acceptance of Canadian usages and laws, is afforded by the Doukhobors’ changed attitude towards the marriage laws. Marriage is, with the Doukhobors, not a civil contract, but a religious sacrament, their belief in this regard being in practice what the Catholic belief is in theory. Their tenets in the matter of marriage have never been interfered with by the Russian government. The registration of marriage is there unknown, and, naturally, when they came to Canada, they continued to marry and be given in marriage without notifying the department of vital statistics, and having their unions registered. They hold that no man and woman should continue to live together as man and wife unless they love and reverence each other. For two who are incompatible in disposition to continue to live in the marriage relation they regard as a sin. Far better would it be for the unhappy couple to separate, and, if so disposed, each seek more congenial partners. Hence, when the Doukhobors first came to Canada, and their advent was made the theme of criticism by newspapers and politicians, who knew little of their customs and beliefs, and were only desirous of discrediting the government during whose administration they migrated, it was stated, and, till the truth was known, it was generally believed, that the Doukhobors were “free lovers,” and that their indiscriminate cohabitation was a disgrace to the land they selected for their homes. As a matter of fact, few people are more chaste.

Their belief as to marriage is the logical outcome of their religious system, but their history sows that they dissolution of the marriage tie is practically unknown. In the last fifty years, Iwachin told me, there had been but one instance, among all the thousands of Doukhobors, of separation between man and wife. Can any other community on earth point to such a record as this? And, moreover, the Rosthern Doukhobors, at least, have shown their willingness, in this as in every other matter, to obey in the spirit and letter the Canadian law. Every marriage solemnized in Terpennie since the beginning of 1901 has been registered, and every birth also. The Doukhobors realize that the Canadian laws are conceived in a spirit of equity, and designed for the protection of civil rights, and are rapidly modifying their practice in many matters so as to conform to the changed conditions of life in a country where laws are framed with a view to the stability and strength of the social fabric.

A Visit to the Communal Bathhouse

It is generally known that the Doukhobors are a scrupulously clean people. They have a communal bath house, which Iwachin took me to see. It was a clay-wattled building, similar in construction to every other in the village and was about twelve feet by twenty in size. Half the building was in the ground, the walls not being more than four feet above the level. The door was very small and low, and was approached by a rough stair case. In its interior the building was divided into a larger and smaller room by a transverse partition. The lesser compartment was the one nearer the entry, and was the furnace room. A big fire place, built of clay, occupied nearly the whole of it. This was surrounded by prairie boulders, or moraines, some of them nearly three feet in diameter.

When any of the community desire to bath, they take a load of wood to the bathhouse and make a huge fire. In an hour after the boulders are thoroughly heated. The bathers then go into the larger inner room and after disrobing, stretch themselves on the wooden benches by which it is surrounded. The fire is taken out, and then pails of water are thrown over the pile of stones. The whole building is at once filled with stream. The bathers remain in the stream chamber for an hour or more, then wash, with cold water, don their clothing, and the bath is finished. Iwachin told me the bathhouse was generally in use three or four times a week, men and women using it on alternate days.

It had been in use yesterday, the building being still warm. He offered to have it heated for me early the following morning, if I would stay overnight, and care to take a bath. He said he had had a bath after the Turkish fashion, with hot air instead of stream, but he greatly preferred the Russian method. So necessary do the Doukhobors consider frequent bathing, that they built the communal bathhouse before they even erected their own residences, living in tents, or under wagons, till it was completed.

A Doukhobor Wedding

We strolled back to the village street, noting on every hand the signs of thrift, industry, frugality and prosperity. By this time we numbered quite a large party, every villager to whom I was introduced deemed it his duty to accompany us, and assist in doing the honors of the place. Every villager we passed raised his hat or bowed with the same ceremonious courtesy that had marked Iwachin’s behavior. The children peeped curiously at the interpreter and myself from behind dark entries or around the edges of haystacks. At one house we found the people – that is, the women – in a state of great domestic bustle and excitement. Enquiry found that there was going to be a wedding that afternoon – that the bride was expected at any moment. The woman of the house became almost voluble as she narrated the circumstances to the interpreter. It was her boy who was to be married, and he and his father had driven over to the village of Hierolofka, and would return with the bride and her father. She gave us all a most cordial invitation to the marriage ceremony and the subsequent feast, all of the time sweeping away the snow from the front of the entry with a vigor that betokened her natural excitement. We assured her that we would certainly be present and then left her to conclude her preparations for the reception of the bridal party. She called us back, however, that we might look at the newly plastered and whitewashed tiny bedroom at the back of the entry, and pointed with pride to the new sheet iron stove, the home-made wooden bed – (there was no bed clothing – the bride would bring that) – the wooden pins on the wall, the gay McCormick calendar, and the other simple domestic necessities, needed by the bridal couple.

Then we went on, at Iwachin’s request, to see the first baby born and registered in Terpennie. It was a sturdy little fellow, just beginning to creep, and his delighted crowing at finding himself the cynosure of such a distinguished and numerous party – for we by this time numbered fully a score – showed that he realized to the full his temporary importance. His younger sister, an infant not two months old, was lying in the high ended and quaintly shaped oaken cradle, that was as substantially built as a line of battle ship. It was not on rockers, as is usual, in Canada, but was suspended from the ceiling by two thongs of hide, and swung instead of rocked. The mother was lifting the cloth from the baby’s face, to let us see it, when we heard a shout from outside, and knew that the bridal party had come. We caught a glimpse of a rapidly driven farm sleigh, and hastily making our adieu to the historic child, the sleeping infant, and the proud mother, we hurried up the street to the house we had recently left.

We found the whole village there on our arrival. The sleight had been driven into the cleanly swept courtyard, and the villagers were ranged round it in a semi-circle between it and the house. In the middle of the sleigh box was the great marriage chest, and on it, facing the tail-board, were the bride and groom, both bravely appareled, the girl especially being brilliant in red, green and purple. On the other edge of the chest, facing the horses, were two other girls, both prospective brides, though their grooms were not in evidence. Seated on the tailboard of the sleight was the bride’s father, and when we came up, he was in the middle of a long prayer, beseeching Heaven to bless the approaching union, to give to the young couple the blessing of fruitfulness, to grant his daughter the love of her husband, the affection of her husband’s parents, and the favor of the village. It was an impressive scene of the villagers in gala dress, with the wide-spreading valley beyond, the snowy plain, and the brilliant sunshine, all combining to make a picture that will dwell long in the memory.

When at length the father had completed his prayer he helped his daughter down from the big chest and out of the sleigh. He kissed her, and gave her hand to the groom, who likewise saluted the bride. Holding each other by the hand, the pair entered the house, the father and the rest of the wedding cortege following. At the door they were met by the father of the groom, who welcomed them with a brief speech, and many bows. Then the assembly, which up to the present had been decorously silent, broke into a hubbub of chatter. The bride was surrounded by the girls of the village, who examined her attire,
passing remarks on the embroidery and other adornments. The elder women bustling about in the preparation of the great marriage feast. The men chatted during the interval, on farm work, the prospects for the spring, and the approaching pilgrimage of the Rosthern merchants to the village, for the purpose of holding the annual sales of implements, etc. The groom seemed as at Canadian weddings, the least important individual in the gathering, and for a long time I looked about for him in vain. When at length he was pointed out to me, I was greatly surprised at his extreme youth. His father said he was 18; but he looked no more than 14. His face was boyish, almost childish, and his general bearing and behavior that of an undeveloped callow stripling. The bride, they told me, was also 18. She was half a head taller than her affianced, broad of hip and shoulder, and deep of chest. She carried herself, too, with a quiet dignity and gentleness that prepossessed us greatly.

I gathered that the principals had but little to do with the arrangement of marriage among the Doukhobors. The alliances are negotiated by the parents, though it is to be supposed that any existing attachments are given some consideration. But, owing to the extreme youth at which marriages are contracted, and the mental habit existing among the Doukhobor children of subordinating their individual judgment to that of their parents, it is but rarely that any complications are made by prior attachments.

The day was rapidly closing in, when the villagers gathered for the marriage song service. For an hour they would sing the psalms and hymns, and then would partake of the great wedding feast. The odor of vegetable soup filled the house, and the young men busied themselves arranging the borrowed tables so as to utilize to the utmost every available inch of room. The father of the groom pressed me to remain to the festival. They would sing, he said, for an hour, and then partake of the wedding meal and then would come the conclusion of the religious ceremony, when he, the father of the groom, would beseech the Almighty’s blessing on the youthful pair, after which the bride’s relatives would rive back home. But the interpreter explained that we had a long way to drive ourselves through a country that was but sparsely settled, and little traveled, and moreover, there was the difficult crossing of the Saskatchewan valley to be made. So, though reluctantly, we had to send for our team. While we were waiting for them the good wife served us scalding tea, in tumblers, and we ate more of the soggy black bread, being entertained, while eating, by the signing – for the musical portion of the service had commenced.

Ewashen family, c. 1902. (l-r) John, Jacob Jr., Jacob Sr. John Kooznetsoff, Anastasia (nee Kooznetsoff), Mary.

Facts as to Progress

In the intervals between the various songs, Iwachin gave us a few general facts as to the progress and present position of the Rosthern settlement of Doukhobours. In Terpennie – the village we were visiting – there were between 100 and 170 inhabitants – forty-seven families in all. Between them they had twenty horses, a hundred and thirty cattle, and forty sheep. In the village of Hierolofka, ten miles away, there were five hundred cattle and a hundred horses. Last fall the Terpennie people had plowed with nine ox or horse teams, in three weeks 325 acres of land, an, with the amount of breaking done, they would have this year a thousand acres under cultivation. Their principal crop would be wheat, but much barley and flax would be grown. Last year the crops were good, he said, but they had sold none of the grain yet. The present price was too low. They would wait, he said, until they got a railroad, and then they could get a better price for their grain. They did not know when they would get the road built, but they believed Mr. Sifton would see that they had proper shipping facilities. They had ten grist mills, operated by water power at Terpennie and Hierolofka. To get the necessary water supply, the Terpennie people had built a canal two miles long – all of it by the spade, and all of it done by the women of the village while the men were working in the fields or on the railroad. It was completed last fall, and would be in operation this spring. The stones used were those formerly in the old Hudson’s Bay fort at Prince Albert, and were teamed nearly a hundred miles. The flour, is, of course, ground “forthright,” and would make the same dark bread in general use among the Doukhobors.

The residents of Terpennie have 47 homesteads. This year the Hierolofka people will have 4,000 acres cropped. As an instance of the extensive nature of their farming operations, they purchased last year forty binders, seventy mowers, and a hundred and twenty plows. Nearly all this was bought on credit, and no better comment on their commercial reliability need be adduced than the fact that, on Jan. 1 of this year, though hardly a bushel of grain had been sold, less than fifteen per cent was unpaid, and this is regarded as being good as the bank. They make use of everything – like Autolycus, they are “snappers up of unconsidered trifles,” picking up nails, old horseshoes, or such things, and carrying them home and putting them to use. They buy only absolute necessities, having learned in the hard school of Muscovite tyranny that economy is wealth. At the towns in which they deal, the merchants are anxious that more of the same class of settlers should come into the country. They say that much opposition was at first manifested at the Doukhobor immigration, but that those who know them best have nothing but praise for them, either as farmers or citizens. In a very few years the Doukhobors will be in an enviable financial position – in fact wealthy. They are peaceable, law-abiding, industrious and thrifty, are anxious to learn English speech and desirous of following Canadian customs.

Good-Bye to Terpennie

While Iwachin and the interpreter had been telling me these facts, I had been munching morsels of the black bread, and sipping the scalding uncreamed tea, and, in the pauses of the conversation, listening to the weird minor music of the wedding, and watching the preparations for the feast that would follow. The room was strong with the odor of vegetable soup, and the air hot and oppressive from the crowding of so many people in such a small space. I was not sorry, therefore, when it was announced that the team was ready. There was much handshaking and bowing and removing of caps as we left the room. The boyish bridegroom was pushed forward by his mother to make his adieux, and his dignified, emotionless bride curtsied in stateliest fashion as we went through the door. Iwachin and Chernoff and a few of the village lads came out to see us off, and nearly all the rest continued at the song service, and the drone of their monotonous chant was the last thing we heard of Terpennie.

We bundled ourselves up comfortably in our furs, and left with many courteous wishes from our hosts for a safe journey, and continued health and long life, and general prosperity, and all other desirable blessings. In a few minutes Terpennie was a low black blot silhouetted against the burning western sky. Down the easy grade we wound into the valley of the Saskatchewan, and in the purple gloaming of the winter dusk, crossed the river, and safely climbed the precipitous bank beyond. It was quite dark when we reached the eastern level. For a while we journeyed quietly, each absorbed in the memory of all that we had that day seen and learned of these God-fearing, tenacious, industrious people. And the interpreter voiced my own unspoken thought when he exclaimed: “Well, they were good Russians, and they’ll make good Canadians.”   J.R.

Special thanks to Corinne Postnikoff of Castlegar, British Columbia for her assistance with the data input of this article.

The Mounted Police and the Doukhobors in Saskatchewan, 1899-1909

by Carl Betke

With the arrival of the Doukhobors on the Canadian Prairies, the North West Mounted Police were assigned to assist the immigrant settlers in adjusting to their new environment. In doing so, they were expected to demonstrate tolerance towards the settlers’ diverse habits so long as they proved to be successful agricultural producers. In documenting Mounted Police confrontations with the Doukhobors during their first decade in Canada, from 1899 to 1909, historian Carl Betke demonstrates that the disruptive activities of a minority of the Doukhobor immigrants were handled very gently by the force in order to assure the agricultural production of a massive number of effective farmers. Reproduced by permission from Saskatchewan History (27, 1974, No. 1).

After the completion of the Canadian Pacific Railway in 1885, settlement in the prairie lands of western Canada increased gradually and the Indian and Metis population came to be regarded as a lessening threat to agricultural development. In the Canadian House of Commons critics of the government began to insist on reductions in the size of the North West Mounted Police force. In answer Sir John A. Macdonald, though he admitted that the previous principal purpose of the force, “to protect the few struggling settlers who were going in there from Indian outrages,” might now have ceased to exist, contended that the police were still required to keep the peace. He alluded to the influx from below the border of “people with all kinds of habits” including raiding, stealing of cattle and smuggling of liquor. His listeners, however, were not long satisfied, for what sort of advertisement was Macdonald’s description for intending immigrants? Every increase in western immigration and settlement ought to reduce the need for a special police force.

Full dress mounted parade by members of the North-West Mounted Police, Calgary, Alberta, c. 1901. Library and Archives Canada PA-202180.

Some reductions were made in the size of the force but, even before the accession of the Laurier government, a new justification of the North West Mounted Police was developed. From the early 1890’s until the advent of the first World War, supporters of the force argued that increasing settlement required greater distribution of the police to perform new services for the struggling pioneers. Besides protecting property and watching the normally docile Indians, the police were now required to take responsibilities for prairie fire prevention and suppression, quarantine enforcement during times of epidemic and quarantine enforcement at the border to prevent the spread of contagious animal diseases. As the North West Mounted Police Comptroller at Ottawa, Fred White, remarked in 1903, ” ‘Police’ is almost a misnomer . . .” But, White assured Laurier, should their services be administered separately by the different government departments, not only would the cost rise but the country would be deprived of the presence of a disciplined force ready for instant mobilization.

Importance was now attached to those police duties which increased the “comfort and security of the settler” who was unaccustomed to the pioneer life and required not only information but also assistance, even to find stray animals. The police often provided relief to destitute farmers or those overcome by winter conditions. New patrol procedures initiated in the late 1880’s, while intended to prevent crime by circulating police officers visibly throughout the countryside, were in fact used to watch over a remarkable range of pioneer activity:

In each District a number of small Detachments are placed at convenient points, each, immediately under a non-Commissioned Officer, or senior Constable. These detachments patrol all the time, and carry patrol slips with remark columns, which are signed by all the settlers they call upon, and every week each of these detachments send in their slips, with a report on the state of the country, crops, crime, settlers coming in and stock they bring, disease, if any, among stock; Indians seen, etc., etc…

The police often encountered the immigrants as early as at their first disembarkation from the train: the police would even sometimes drive them “over the most desirable districts for settlement,” providing not only transport but also “cooking utensils, and giving advice and information.” In special cases the police were asked to supply transportation to foreign immigration promoters: one Berliner was driven “to see the German colonists near Regina, who have made the best progress in farming, as he proposes to take letters from them to further his work in Europe.” Once settlers were established countless police reports on their progress were submitted to the offices of the Commissioner and the Comptroller, for referral to the appropriate officials should action seem necessary.

Instructions to patrolmen emphasized that reports should include fairly detailed information about the agricultural progress of the settlers but they did not normally require comment about the ethnic background of the settlers. Among patrolmen it was common, nevertheless, to identify ethnic groups in reports, so that the relative suitability of different groups was thus incidentally compared. One report, for example, stated that:

the majority of the settlers who are in reduced circumstances are Austria-Hungarians, Bulgarians, Romanians and Russian-Germans from the Black Sea District, but few of whom appear to have brought a single dollar with them into the Country. With the British and German settlers it is otherwise.

While the British, American, Scandinavian and German settlers were generally believed superior acquisitions, other groups distinguished themselves with the police by their unacceptable behaviour. In police reports it is difficult clearly to distinguish personal antipathies to “foreign” elements from legitimate careful judgments of the limits of their agricultural suitability. Ultimately, however, the most important criterion of a settler’s merit was the measure of his self-sufficiency and prosperity, despite any patrolman’s private feelings about a group. So, for example, early doubtful expressions about the desirability of the “unclean” Galician settlers were eventually replaced by grudging approval of their productive success. In fact the police were often called upon to produce reports to counteract sweeping condemnations levelled at the “Galicians” by fellow settlers. Similarly, a distaste for allegedly isolationist habits among Mennonites was overridden by evidence of obvious agricultural ability. On the other hand, disapproval (sometimes accompanied by overtones of personal prejudice) of certain Belgian, French and Jewish colonies in police reports was never reversed, at least in part because those colonies quickly proved to be economic failures.

In only two outstanding cases did alien habits threaten to overshadow productive expertise in importance. In the Mormon example, police attention to the settlers’ supposed polygamous propensities was discontinued in order that Canada might reap the benefits of their irrigation experiments; in the Doukhobor example, the Canadian government waited in vain for disturbances to subside, repeatedly pointing out their remarkable farming progress. In these situations, in which the police sense of outrage was not matched by that of the government, we see most clearly that the police were meant to minimize alien social variables while maximizing agricultural expertise in their evaluations of immigrants. They were to assist the settlers in adjusting to the new environment.

A constable of the North-West Mounted Police, c. 1890. Library and Archives Canada PA-122660.

By describing a most extreme case, the following account of Mounted Police confrontations with Doukhobors in Saskatchewan illustrates the tolerance with which settlers of diverse habits were treated as long as the majority proved to be successful farm producers. One must keep in mind that Doukhobor demonstrations never involved a majority of the Doukhobor settlers and that, as a rule, the demonstrators did not employ violent tactics. The police were not, that is to say, confronted with anything like a Doukhobor “uprising”. It is remarkable, nevertheless, that despite some animosity on the part of neighbouring settlers and despite the limits to which police patience was occasionally driven, the demonstrators received exceptionally benign treatment. Much more serious aberrations would have to have been displayed to undermine the Canadian government’s determination to fill the west with good farmers.

Doukhobor immigrants to the North-West Territories began arriving at Winnipeg on January 27, 1899; by September, 7,427 Doukhobors had entered the area. 1,472 of them shortly established themselves on the North Saskatchewan river west of Carlton near Battleford; 1,404 settled in the “Thunder Hill” or “North” colony on the border of Manitoba and the Territories, and the largest group, some 4,478, located in the vicinity of Yorkton. Occasionally the North West Mounted Police would refer to members of the last group as “Cyprus” Doukhobors because about a quarter of them had been temporarily situated in Cyprus. Canadian officials had accepted from Russia’s Count Tolstoy and other Russian and English patrons recommendations of the moral uprightness and agricultural ability of the “Russian Quakers”. Upon their arrival even their appearance fostered great expectations:

. . . their fine physical appearance . . . coupled with the not less important fact that they are skillful agriculturalists, thrifty and moral in character, affords good grounds for congratulations to those who have been instrumental in their coming to this country, especially when it is considered that this has been brought about without incurring any expenditure of public moneys, other than about the amount usually paid in the form of bonuses for continental emigrants.

The police found much to admire in the Doukhobor pioneer operations. They showed unique skills in breaking horses, constructing ovens of “home-made sun-dried bricks” and building clean and sturdy though dark houses and stables of sod, mud and logs. They were orderly, quiet, well-organized, “patient, industrious and self-supporting;” the women proved equal to the men in strength and skill at manual labour and attended to household duties besides. From the Yorkton area nearly seven hundred Doukhobor men left to work for wages during the first summer, principally at railway construction. Some of the women supplemented their income as domestic servants. It was true that the police learned of one case of collective “indecent exposure”, that many were slow to depart from their vegetarian principles and that “their communistic way” would prevent them from quickly assimilating Canadian customs, but no objections had been noticed to the announcements which the police made to various Doukhobor assemblies about the ordinances relating to prairie fires, game regulations, registration of births and deaths and control of contagious diseases. The signs in general were of peaceful and successful adaptation to western Canadian life. The greatest excitement was provided by the efforts of California land agents and speculators to lure several hundred Doukhobor families to California, efforts vigorously and successfully resisted by Canadian Immigration officials. They were not willing to give up so easily a people as productive as the Doukhobors were showing themselves to be.

Doukhobor family, Saskatchewan, c. 1903. Glenbow Archives NA-2878-15

But it soon became evident that not all of the Doukhobors were happy with the laws requiring individual registration of land holdings and registration of the births, marriages and deaths among their people. These requirements evidently violated an ingrained Doukhobor tradition to submit to no human authority. The federal government officials, according to one recent analysis, had three alternatives open to them: they might immediately have insisted on total compliance with the laws (but the cause of the “Russian Quakers” was popular abroad and, to a degree, in Canada), or they might have effected a clear special set of compromises with the laws for the Doukhobors. Instead, they elected to follow a third course, evading the issue and hoping that the conflicting demands of the Doukhobors and the State would work themselves out without any irrevocable government intercession. Officials were optimistic “that as they come to appreciate the benefits of Canadian laws and customs, the prejudice will gradually disappear, and they will gladly comply with the requirements of the government. ” It was a plausible course of inaction, but it left the Mounted Police to oversee the “gradual” but turbulent transition stage. There was no set strategy for such an operation and Christen Junget (later Assistant Commissioner Junget), the North West Mounted Police Commanding Officer at Yorkton in those years, recalled in his retirement that Mounted Police policy with respect to the troublesome Doukhobors in his district amounted to the single catchphrase: “Leave it for Junget.”

Some remarks of Clifford Sifton, Minister of the Interior, illustrate the ambiguity of the police role in relation to the Doukhobors. On February 15, 1902 two delegates from the Thunder Hill colony presented to Sifton the Doukhobor claims for communal exemption from registration of land tenure, births, deaths and marriages. In the manner of a teacher setting school boys straight, Sifton suggested that if the Doukhobors would simply get on with registering their homesteads individually they would be permitted to live and work together in village communities and would not be compelled to fulfill homestead requirements individually. Aside from that concession, though, Canadian laws (which, Sifton was sure, had proven universally beneficial) would be “carried out in every case without fear” by “the strong hand of the law which protects you and your families from danger . . .” Of course, the Doukhobors were to rest assured that the officials of his department would “willingly do no injury to your conscience or your principles.” Perhaps this position, which required the police to be simultaneously not only the “strong hand of the law” but also sympathetic to unique Doukhobor principles, justified the police in referring to the Doukhobors as “Sifton’s pets”.

A massive Doukhobor demonstration took place in the fall of 1902. The recruits, most of whom came from the villages just to the north of Yorkton, undertook a somewhat undirected march. This phenomenon has been attributed to a combination of factors arising from the adjustments necessary for the Doukhobors to live in this new setting and from the erratic leadership of Peter Verigin. In the first place, the pressure to have the Doukhobors register their land individually exacerbated divisions within the Doukhobor communities. Those inclined to obey the law were joined, in the eyes of zealous traditionalists, with those heretics who had worked on the railways and adopted other such non-Doukhobor habits as wearing “English” clothes and eating meat. In addition, though, the entrenchment of the traditionalists were strengthened by their desire to please Peter Verigin upon his expected imminent arrival among them: Verigin had been sending fancifully philosophical letters condemning the use of cattle in such a paradise of easily cultivated vegetation and speculating about the benefit to the brain of “solar heat” in some haven “near the sun.” Thus, mystical Doukhobor claims to be searching for this kind of hot paradise during their marches were joined to that desire of some to embarrass the government and force concessions to their demands on the issues of land and personal registration.

At first Corporal Junget registered some alarm. On October 22, 1902 he reported that there had recently been considerable missionary movement amongst them. From the Kamsack and Assiniboine villages they have walked in bands of several hundred (men and women) visiting other villages holding meetings and trying to make converts to their very extreme and somewhat dangerous views.

Doukhobor pilgrims leaving Yorkton to evangelize the world, 1902.  Note the mounted escort of N.W.M.P. special constables in the upper left foreground. Library and Archives Canada C014077.

But the march was soon recognized to be non-violent and Junget’s concern changed:

. . . the Doukhobors themselves are quite harmless, but they carry no provisions with them whatever, and their number increasing every day, it will be impossible for them to find shelter and food in the villages they go through, and no doubt many of the women and children will perish if a snow storm sets in. I have reported the above to the different officials of the Department of Interior up here …

North West Mounted Police Commissioner Perry detailed Inspectors D’A. E. Strickland and J. 0. Wilson with a party of men to afford protection to settlers along the Doukhobors’ way if the need should arise and to give any assistance Interior Department officials might ask. When the marchers reached Yorkton on October 28 the enormity of the situation appalled Junget: there were about 1,800 of these “Doukhobors seized by religious mania” for whom shelter had to be found and special guards posted to prevent disturbances in the town. The “pilgrims” were judged “peaceful and law-abiding” but “the immediate assistance of three or four constables is required to assist Dominion officials in their treatment of the people and for patrolling of abandoned villages” to “protect property.” Perry sent the desired four constables and wired Comptroller White in Ottawa for instructions, but was advised only to continue assistance to the Immigration officials.’ Colonization Agent C. W. Speers posted a “public notice” warning that all persons interfering with or appropriating any property of the marching Doukhobors “without legal right” or without giving notice to Inspector Strickland or his officer in charge would be prosecuted according to the law.

Efforts to disperse the missionaries back to their villages failed; the Doukhobors determined on October 29 to push on in a south-easterly direction. On November 2 Speers asked Inspector Strickland for a police escort to accompany the “pilgrims” in order “to prevent any inconvenience or annoyance to the other inhabitants of the Country, and avoid as far as possible, any breach of the Peace or collision which would be likely to result in violence.” On November 4 an officer and twenty non-commissioned officers and constables were placed under instructions from the Superintendent of Immigration, Frank Pedley. As this force travelled to catch up with the marching Doukhobors, a comical incident illustrated the extent to which the Department of the Interior (and, therefore, the police) were willing to take care of the stubborn “fanatics”. “We came to Birtle, Manitoba,” recalled Junget later,

and we heard that they were short of diapers. 1 told Jim Spalding to go to the departmental store and buy up a lot. And he blew up: “I didn’t join the Force to buy diapers for Doukhobors!”

Nevertheless, the diapers had to be obtained: Junget bought them himself.

Wintry conditions were setting in; it was decided the zealots should be stalled at Minnedosa, Manitoba, then returned to Yorkton and thence to their homes. At noon on Sunday, November 9 the wanderers were located in the Minnedosa rink with a Mounted Police guard at the door. At 5:00 p.m. a special train arrived to take them back to Yorkton but, upon leaving the rink, some 200 of the Doukhobors seemed determined to resume once more their eastward journey. Inspector Wilson’s report indicated only that “a few of the leaders” offered resistance “and had to be carried. About one hundred would get in a bunch and lock their arms and then bunches had to be broken up. which took considerable time.” The Yorkton Enterprise, however, provided a more graphic description: after the Doukhobors’ way had been blocked by the townspeople,

Agent Speers grabbed a fussy pilgrim by the arm and proceeded with him toward the cars, at the same time saying the others must follow. Some seemed inclined to do so, seeing which the spectators encouraged their wavering inclinations by vigorous means. Many of them, when seized by the arm, walked quietly to the cars, and were there received by the policemen in charge and placed in the cars. Others required vigorous application of Manitoba muscle, in the form of shoves and pushes, to make them at all inclined to obey the voice of authority. Others, resisting stubbornly all attempts to guide them in the desired direction, were unceremoniously downed by the more athletic of the spectators, and bodily carried to the train.

Once this minority was aboard, the others, who had remained in the rink observing the disturbance, resignedly followed and there were no further incidents during the train trip back to Yorkton. From Yorkton they were the next day escorted on their final foot journey to their villages; some had just thirty miles to walk, others as far as Swan River. The presence of crowds of spectators encouraged the Swan River men to hold back for a mile or two but they too soon followed the police lead, in fact developed a readiness to “do anything” for the police, as it was “snowing very hard and cold.” One escorting patrolman found it “very difficult to get information from the Doukhobors, as very few of them could or would speak English,” but they “all seemed to pay the greatest respect to the police, and at all times during the trip would do anything you told them to do.” Moreover, they were “a very clean people, their houses, stables, etc., being far ahead of the majority of settlers that I have seen in the country.”

The Doukhobor pilgrims carrying their helpless on their trek, 1902.  Library and Archives Canada C009784.

It subsequently became North West Mounted Police policy to “arrange for patrols to visit their [Doukhobor] villages occasionally, and keep an eye on them generally.” If pilgrimages occurred police were directed to assist Immigration officials “towards persuading these people to remain at their villages.” Coincidentally Peter Verigin’s impressive arrival at Yorkton in late December, 1902 convinced most officials that their troubles with the Doukhobors were at an end. Whether, as Junget originally thought, Verigin controlled and quieted the majority of the pilgrims, or the police patrols created the entire effect despite Verigin, in any case no further mass wanderings occurred. Instead the police were involved with fragmentary groups of two or three dozen demonstrators who began to develop some highly embarrassing tactics. The first report of nudity came at the end of November, 1902 from the Rosthern area in Battleford district. The Doukhobors in question were evidently naked at their own meetings, not particularly in revolt, but Commissioner Perry thought it opened “a very large question as to our treatment of the Doukhobors.” Clearly they were “not conforming to the laws of the country,” but Perry hesitated to enforce them without specific authority from the Interior Department, “as in all cases of infractions of the law it is on account of their religious belief.” No such specific instructions were forthcoming.

Soon the demonstrations and the nudity coincided; it is to be suspected that the curiosity and discomfiture with which certain police officers investigated meeting-house nudity simply demonstrated to the Doukhobors how effective public nudity might be. Enterprising newspaper and private photographers then increased the temptation by “offering inducements” to encourage Doukhobors to pose in a nude state. Heading off a march by a group of determined nudists took some ingenuity. One naive young constable in the Battleford district was forced to desperate measures:

I told a Doukhobor girl to tell the others that if they would stop and not march, but get their picture taken I would send it to the papers. They stopped and asked me to stand alongside of them. I told the photographer not to show the photograph or plate to anybody until I had seen it. … It was my intention to destroy the plate. …

Needless to say, his trust in the photographer was misplaced: information about the circulation of a photograph of nude Doukhobors flanked by a strapping North West Mounted Police constable reached Inspector Parker at Saskatoon by way of a Toronto Globe reporter who saw a copy in Moose Jaw. Constable Melanson was found guilty of disgraceful conduct, fined $5.00 and sentenced to one month’s imprisonment with hard labour. Two weeks later the Commissioner was still sending out confidential letters trying to retrieve circulating copies of that photograph.

Punishment of nude pilgrims refusing to be dispersed to their homes was never very effective. They would be charged under the Vagrancy Act for indecent exposure and incarcerated in the Regina jail for several months. In jail, however, they were no less uncooperative than outside, refusing to eat regularly, carrying vegetarianism to the extremes of eating grass and refusing to work. Sifton believed it useless to flog them or to apply other normal disciplinary measures; surely a period of time on a frugal diet of bread and water with minimal special attention would bring them around. Rather than to free them all at the same time, the policy was to release them in “batches”.

By 1905 the Interior Department concluded that the Doukhobors had been in the country too long to remain in the position of special wards of the government; the Deputy Minister announced that henceforth they should be treated “exactly as other members of the community.” The police took that to mean much more harshly than previously and were delighted to see a Yorkton magistrate recommend that the men in a marching party apprehended in August, 1905 should be committed to Brandon Asylum. Unfortunately the North West Territorial Government refused to send the men to the Asylum, doubting that they were in fact insane. The police expressed disappointment: “if we are permitted to deal with them with a firm hand,” thought Comptroller White, “they will soon become reconciled to obedience to the laws of the country.”

But Junget did not consider this occasional restlessness “to be any trouble compared with what may arise between the Community and Non-Community Doukhobors,” that is, between those who wished to keep to the traditional communal style of life and those who wished to register their own homesteads. By February, 1905 Junget had lost all faith in Peter Verigin; he now believed Verigin’s influence to be instrumental in inciting dedicated “Community” Doukhobors to intimidate and even occasionally to assault prospective independent Doukhobor settlers, particularly in the northern villages near the Swan River. The police strength in Yorkton sub-district was increased to permit a strong detachment at Kamsack for constant patrol of the troubled area, evidently with good calming effect. The most worrisome villages were those near Fort Pelly, where the police kept anxious watch in order to try to prevent recurring incidence of “Community” Doukhobors taking forceable possession of or burning down the houses of “Independent” Doukhobors.

These homesteaders are waiting for a Dominion Lands Office to open the quarter-section homesteads on the Doukhobor reserves in Saskatchewan. The federal government’s cancellation of the Doukhobor entries led to an American-style land rush, one of the few witnessed in western Canada.

In April, 1906 the Interior Department inaugurated special investigations in areas of Doukhobor concentration of “unpatented homesteads entered for prior to September 1, 1905.” The purpose was to have all entries of Doukhobors in the community cancelled and then to ask the displaced Doukhobors to indicate their intention to become British subjects and conduct semi-regular homestead operations. If they did not re-enter the homesteads before May 1, 1907 they were to be placed on “reserves” of fifteen acres of land per occupant, the vacated lands to be opened for homestead application. Communities on non-registered land were no longer to be tolerated; the new Minister of the Interior, Frank Oliver, wanted them treated as any other squatters, to be served notices to vacate by the police. This news alone caused great excitement in the Fort Pelly area in early 1907; the tension was increased by orders to the police to put an end to the traditional illegal cutting of timber in that area and to seize the timber already cut. Further confusing the Doukhobors, Verigin had left them to their own devices since late 1906. The Fort Pelly police detachment expected another pilgrimage in the spring; Junget fretted that, as usual, “I presume we can do nothing with these people except watch their movements closely.” He worried that “the Doukhobor fanatics who have been repeatedly sent to prison from here” were once more gathering together, numbering near sixty in March. He would have liked to round up the leaders and have them “given the limit under the vagrancy act,” but was permitted only to give his detachments orders “if it should come to the worst to have them shut up in some uninhabited village and placed under guard.”

Constable Ross, N.W.M.P. holds this crowd in Yorkton, Saskatchewan during the 1907 Doukhobor homestead rush. Library and Archives Canada PA-022246.

The police presence seems to have delayed the group’s journeys’ meanwhile Junget was occupied with the land rush which resulted from the opening of Doukhobor lands in May. He had “never experienced a meaner job,” he wrote, than that of preserving order in the struggle for position at the land office in Yorkton. Then there was the associated problem of removing resistant “squatter” Community Doukhobors near Yorkton, an operation also necessary to some extent in the Prince Albert district. No sooner were the difficulties of these transfers cleared away than the anticipated pilgrimage from the Fort Pelly and Swan River areas got underway, triggered by the final dispossession. Over seventy strong, these Doukhobors proceeded in July in an easterly direction, rapidly passing from the jurisdiction of the Royal North West Mounted Police.

It was not long before they were back. Wintering at Fort William, they thoroughly alienated the populace of Ontario and were shipped by the Ontario government to Yorkton in late April, 1908. Junget, still having his troubles with the occasional local case of assault by Community Doukhobors on their independent neighbours, was in no mood to welcome them. The “seventy-one religiously demented Doukhobors, vagrants, consisting of men, women and children” were “absolutely destitute, have no homes to go to, most of them are nude and committing indecent acts already,” he reported. Verigin was typically unwilling to help and Junget, once the police did manage to get them off the train, struggling and disrobing, could not get any room for them at the Immigration Hall. He was ordered to see that they did not suffer or walk the streets nude; a disgruntled Junget would have preferred to send the worst of them “to a lunatic Asylum, and [have] the remainder of them charged with vagrancy, and . . . divided up between [sic] the different jails throughout the province.” The townspeople continued to resist Junget’s efforts to find lodging for the Doukhobors, but he finally succeeded in securing the Exhibition Building of the Agricultural Society and in having the naked Doukhobors carried in one by one. On May 18 they were moved, in the 1:00 a.m. stillness, to a house just outside the town.

The Saskatchewan government rejected Junget’s suggestion to commit the “worst” eighteen men and ten women to Brandon Asylum and the other thirty-one adults to jail as vagrants. Saskatchewan jails did not have the room and idea of such a concentration of Doukhobors in Brandon Asylum was not likely to appeal to the Manitoba government. Instead, on June 5 the Doukhobors were placed, again by a pre-dawn surprise manoeuvre, in a compound featuring a seven foot board fence three miles from Orcadia. An attempt to separate the men and women was soon abandoned; simply to prevent them from breaking out proved to require fifteen to twenty constables. Junget’s suggestion to remove eleven leaders in a body to await proceedings in a guard house, thus defusing the risk of an uprising in the enclosure, was evidently followed. The result, though, was unexpected: the remaining group went on a hunger strike, the adults preventing the children from eating. The children were removed, but the starvation continued, raising the spectre of embarrassing deaths in the compound. The police were therefore greatly relieved when Verigin was finally induced to take charge of the children and use his influence to bring the hunger strike to an end. The Doukhobors became sufficiently orderly that the camp was broken up in September.

Six men and six women identified as the “worst” ringleaders had in July been sentenced to six months in jail pending further proceedings. Junget would still have liked to see all of them incarcerated in Brandon Asylum and the rest of party jailed in order to avoid recurrences of the march but only four of the men were sent to Brandon, one by one to avoid too great a collective shock to their followers, and the others were released. This precipitated a re-congregation in an abandoned Doukhobor village; there followed continual reports that they intended marching to Brandon to demand the release of their leaders. A constable was placed on constant watch. Although he once had to bury a corpse left by the nude “fanatics” to decompose in the sun, his presence seemed to prevent any march. By the end of the summer some of them were departing from tradition to look for work.

At this time Verigin’s plans to locate a true Doukhobor community in the Kootenay area of British Columbia were maturing and a new chapter would soon be inaugurated in the history of relations between the Mounted Police and the Doukhobors. On the prairies the disruptive activities of a minority of the Doukhobor immigrants had been handled very gently in order to assure the agricultural production of a massive number of effective farmers. The police had been asked repeatedly to forego punitive measures to let the new settlers find their way to an acceptable mode of behaviour.

Group of Doukhobor pilgrims followed by small boys, Kamsack, Saskatchewan, c. 1909. Glenbow Archives NA-2878-17

The police did not act out of personal sympathy for the demonstrators. One may search Mounted Police records in vain for information which will lead to at least understanding of the motivations of the discontented Doukhobors. Police reports referred repeatedly to “Doukhobors seized by religious mania”, “fanatics”, “religiously demented Doukhobors” and “lunatics”; the police did not begin to exercise the considerable patience necessary to discover explanations for the Doukhobors’ unusual behaviour. Total lack of perception only increased police irritability, particularly when the activities of a small band of Doukhobors could command the attention of nearly a like number of policemen. Responsibility for the nature of the Mounted Police response to the Doukhobors rests elsewhere: with the federal government.

It is true that 1906 had marked a change in federal government policy: Doukhobors ignoring prescribed homesteading regulations were thereafter to be treated more harshly. It must be remembered, however, that those refusing to re-enter for homesteads according to the letter of the law were not quite summarily evicted: they were conceded reserves of land, even though this was at the inadequate rate of fifteen acres per occupant. The police, moreover, received no revised instructions for disbanding the ensuing Doukhobor march more roughly than they had preceding ones. Nor did that march involve massive numbers of recalcitrants reacting against harsh police treatment.

The very fact that so few Doukhobors (less than one percent of the Doukhobor population of Saskatchewan) participated in that final demonstration, despite its genesis as a result of what might easily have been described as a treacherous reversal of government policy, is significant. It sustains the argument that the peculiar indecisive course prescribed for the Mounted Police in this situation was justified. Nearly 2,000 had participated in the first march in 1902; it is remarkable that only a handful found sufficient reason to demonstrate thereafter. The police themselves apparently provided no cause. The adjustment of the great majority of the Doukhobors to peaceful agricultural pursuits represented a gratifying conclusion to the efforts of the Mounted Police and the government that directed them. That the policy they had enacted was not altogether successful would be proven in British Columbia, not in Saskatchewan.

This article originally appeared in the pages of Saskatchewan History, an award-winning magazine dedicated to encouraging both readers and writers to explore the province’s history. Published by the Saskatchewan Archives since 1948, it is the pre-eminent source of information and narration about Saskatchewan’s unique heritage.  For more information, visit Saskatchewan History online at: http://www.saskarchives.com/web/history.html.