To the Ends of the Earth : An Introduction to the Conservative Low German Mennonites in the Americas

During the 1920s some 8000 conservative Dutch-Russian Mennonites moved from Canada northern Mexico and the Chaco region of Paraguay. Today they have grown into a set of communities totaling about 180,000 persons and have spread into other regions of Paraguay and Mexico, and throughout the Americas, including Bolivia, Belize, and Argentina. Meanwhile, many others have migrated north Canada and the southern U.S. Their story is that of an old order people, that is, plain people, seeking conserve Anabaptist principles by embracing visible symbols of separation from the wider Unlike the Amish and Old Order Mennonites in the United States and Ontario, these conservative Mennonites sought maintain traditions by migrating increasingly isolated geographic sites, to the ends of the earth. They intentionally became a 'transnational' people. Their theology venerated lives suffering pilgrims and stated intention was maintain the religious culture of ancestors. Despite this desire, history shows that they have been required make numerous adjustments, the most noticeable one being still more migrations in search of economic and cultural survival. THE FACES OF THE LOW GERMAN DUTCH-RUSSIAN MENNONITES They are a people whom many see as social antiques who have withdrawn from the modern world. (1) They by lantern light, ride in buggies and shun high school. (2) Their threads of social life [make] a single fabric that stretches from cradle grave. (3) The women are respected for their strong work ethic, emphasis 'family values,' and respect for land, (4) and within the family they are independent and assertive. (5) Contrary most traditional theories of assimilation ... [they] have not been absorbed into mainstream ... society, (6) and with a time-tested repertoire of actions and attitudes they have been able themselves. (7) Sometimes the stern rules of the church and the hard daily toil ... is too much, (8) but for hem tradition is not a senseless burden be cast off, but ... a reliable guide in a volatile world. (9) They practice a kind of farming that has been proven preserve communities. (10) They are an old order people on the backroad heaven. (11) Most of these quotations, of course, pertain the Amish in the United States and are taken from the work of recognized scholars of the Amish--Hostetler, Kraybill, Bowman, Kasdorf, Nolt, Jellison, Reschly and others. But these quotations also describe a missing piece of the old order puzzle: the conservative Dutch-Russian Mennonites who first settled in Canada in the 1870s and who continue speak a Flemish-West Prussian Low German dialect. (12) Today about 130,000 of these black-kerchiefed homemakers and conservatively attired farmers and craftsmen (often wearing black overalls and cowboy hats)--plain people par excellence--are spread across the Americas. They can be found in various points between La Crete, Alberta, just 100 miles from Canada's Northwest Territories, Guatrache, Argentina, 300 miles southwest of Buenos Aires--a span of 7,233 miles. They live between Northfield, Nova Scotia and Seminole, Texas; between Mexico's semi-arid broad valleys of the Sierra Madre East Paraguay's fertile, rolling lands, once tropical rainforest. The significance of these plain people can be measured by numbers: an estimated 50,000 in Mexico, 8,000 in Belize, 48,000 in Bolivia, 12,000 in Paraguay, 4,000 in Argentina and perhaps 10,000 of the 50,000 who have returned north, mostly Canada, but also Kansas, Oklahoma and Texas. (13) All reject high school education, public schools, musical instruments, electronic media and fashionable clothes. And about half, perhaps 65,000, also reject the automobile, electricity, telephones and rubber tires tractors. They are a horse-and-buggy people, living in the simplest of dwellings, toiling farms. …

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