Littell's Living Age/Volume 135/Issue 1745/The Mennonite Communists
THE MENNONITE COMMUNISTS.
An interesting account of the Mennonites in Manitoba is given by the Winnipeg Standard. The Mennonite reservation, east of the Red River and about twenty-five miles south-east of Winnipeg, is now as well populated as any district of the province of Manitoba, and the most recent immigration has been directed to a reservation of seventeen townships adjoining the frontier and extending west of Red River to Pembina Mountain.
The settlement on the reservation first mentioned, called Rat River, consists of six hundred and fifty families and on the second reservation, called Dufferin, four hundred and fifty families have been planted. In addition thirty-three families have been have been settled near Scratching River, and a late arrival of thirty-five families will go to Dufferin.
Estimating five to a family, the Mennonite settlements of Manitoba contain a population of 5,865, which will doubtless increase steadily, but by no means with the volume of the past three years. There are Mennonite settlements in the Western States, but the land system there enforced does not admit of special reservations; and Manitoba has thus been enabled to present greater inducements for this class of settlers, the community being able to organise itself according to its traditions, including the rural village life of the "dorf" under which groups of families take their homesteads separately but throw them together and form a village or dorf.
Through these villages a street two chains wide is laid, and the plot divided into half-acre lots, with assignments for church, school or other public use. A tract most suitable for tillage is then selected in a block which is enclosed, and within which each head of a family cultivates his allotment. A hay meandow, held also in severalty, is chosen and the remainder of the consolidated homesteads is used as a range for cattle and other animals, which are attended by a herdsman, who is paid by the dorf. The village lots and other subdivisions are distributed by lot. The houses are comfortable heated by central brick overns. Each family has a yoke of oxen, two cows and poultry. The pig is not wanting, and there are five hundred sheep and one hundred and fifty horses on the Rat River reservation.