The Conquest: The Story of a Negro Pioneer

  CHAPTER XL

  THE MENNONITES

  During the first half of the sixteenth century, Menno Simons founded adenomination of Christians in Friesland, a province of the Netherlands.Many of these Mennonites settled in Northern Germany. This religiousbelief was opposed to military service and about the close of theAmerican Revolution the Mennonites began emigrating, until more thanfifty thousand of their number had found homes west of the Dneiper, nearthe Black Sea, in Southern Russia, around Odessa. These people werefanatical in their belief, rejected infant baptism and original sin,believing in baptism only on profession of faith, and were opposed totheological training.

  In Russia, as in Germany, they led lives of great simplicity, bothsecularly and religiously and lived in separate communities.

  The gently rolling lands, with a rich soil, responded readily tocultivation, and history proves the Germans always to have been goodfarmers. The Mennonites found peace and prosperity in southern Russia,until the Crimean war. Being opposed to military service, when Russiabegan levying heavy taxes on their lands and heavier toll from theirfamilies, by taking the strong young men to carry on the war, theMennonites became dissatisfied under the Russian government, and leftthe country in great numbers, removing to America, and settling alongthe Jim river in South Dakota.

  Among these settlers was a family by the name of Wesinberger, who hadgrown prosperous, their forefathers having gone to Russia among thefirst, although they were not Mennonites. Christopher the youngest son,was among those drawn to go to the war, but the Wesinbergers wereprosperous, and paid the examining physician twelve hundred and fiftyrubles (about one thousand dollars) to have Christopher "made sick" andpronounced unfit for service. With the approach of the Russian-JapaneseWar, when it was seen that Russia would be forced into war with Japan,the boys having married, and with sons of their own, who would have to"draw," the Wesinberger brothers sold their land and set sail forAmerica. At the time the war broke out, John and Jacob were living onhomesteads, in the county adjoining Tipp county on the north,Christopher having settled in western Canada.

  It was while they were breaking prairie near my sister's homestead, thatI became acquainted with the former, who, at that time owned a hundredand fifty head of cattle, seventy-five head of horses, hogs, and allkinds of farm machinery, besides a steam prairie breaking outfit andfifteen hundred acres of land between them.

  During rainy days along in April, to pass the time away, I would visitthem, and while sitting by the camp fire was told of what I have writtenabove, but where they interested me most was when they discussedastronomy and meteorology. They could give the most complete descriptionof the zodiacal heavens and the different constellations. It seems thatastronomy had interested their ancestors before leaving Germany nearlyone hundred and thirty years before, and it had been taught to eachsucceeding generation. They seemed to know the position of each planet,and on several occasions when the nights were clear, with a powerfultelescope, they would try to show them to me, but as I knew little ornothing of astronomy, I understood but little of their discussionsconcerning the heliocentric longitude of all the planets, or the pointsat which they would appear if seen from the sun.

  Before many months rolled around I had good reason to believe at least apart of what they tried to explain to me, and that was, that accordingto the planets we were nearing a certain Jupiter disturbance.

  "And what does that mean?" I asked.

  "That means," they explained, "It will be dry."

  "Jupiter" said John, as he leisurely rolled a cigarette,"circumnavigates the sun once while the earth goes around it twelvetimes. In Russia Jupiter's position got between the sun and theconstellation Pisces, Aries, Taurus and Gemini, it was invariably wetand cool and small grain crops were good, but as it passed on and gotbetween the sun and the constellations Libra and Scorpio it was alwaysfollowed by a minimum of rainfall and a maximum heat, which caused asevere drouth."

  They had hoped it would be different in America, but explained furtherthat when they had lived in Russia it commenced to get dry around St.Petersburg, Warsaw and all northern Russia a year or so before it did insouthern Russia.

  They had relatives living around Menno, in Hutchinson County, SouthDakota, who had witnessed the disastrous drouth during Cleveland'sadministration. Jupiter was nearing the position it had then occupiedand would, in sixty days, be at the same position it had been at thattime.

  While few people pay any attention to weather "dopsters," I did a littlethinking and remembered it had been dry in southern Illinois at thattime, and I began to feel somewhat uneasy. According to their knowledge,if the same in southern America as it had been in southern Russia, itwould begin to get dry about a year before the worst drouth, then a verydry year, the third year would begin to improve, and after the fourthyear conditions would again become normal, but the concensus of theiropinion was there would be a drouth.