Pacifists in Chains: The Persecution of Hutterites during the Great War

Chapter One: Called to Duty

Chapter One Called to Duty Thus saith the Lord: “Stand ye in the ways, and see, and ask for the old paths, where is the good way, and walk therein, and ye shall find rest for your souls.” —Jeremiah 6:16 All Talk Is of War The wonder is that the United States Army even wanted four young Hutterite farmers from the Rockport Colony in South Dakota. The communal church to which they belonged had been resolutely set against all warfare since its inception during the Protestant Reformation nearly four hundred years earlier. And, when their grandparents immigrated to the United States in the 1870s, they did so by traveling thousands of miles, all to avoid conscription in the Russian army. Rather than agree to put on Russian uniforms, the Hutterites left their established farms in the breadbasket steppes to break sod in a state and a nation eager for settlers. As part of the international courting process (Canada was in the bidding for these skillful immigrant farmers as well), President Ulysses S. Grant personally wooed emissaries for the Hutterites at his summer home on Long Island. While the president said that he couldn’t promise that they would be free of military service in the United States, he made the prospect 2 Pacifists in Chains of a draft sound highly unlikely—they could count on at least fifty untroubled years, he assured them. And yet here were four young farmers on the morning of May 25, 1918, well short of the fifty-year mark, summoned by the army for service in World War I. Three of the men were brothers: David, Michael, and Joseph Hofer. As might be expected in their closed community, the fourth man, Jacob Wipf, was a relative; he was Joseph’s brother-in-law. All four were leaving wives and young children at home on the colony. On this day they were boarding a special military train for Camp Lewis in Washington State, where tens of thousands of recruits from Western states were already learning to salute, drill, and handle a bayonet. Jacob Wipf and the Hofer brothers, as sheltered as any farmers, knew they would step off that train to face sergeants who were eager to turn them into fighting soldiers as well. As the men packed Bibles in their bags that morning, they were ready to assure officers of the highest rank that they were warriors only in the sense of being soldiers for the one true commander in chief, Jesus Christ, who said, “Love your enemies.”1 At Rockport Colony near Alexandria, South Dakota, where the men were raised, everyone followed a dress code that, with symmetry of design, set them apart from their neighbors. Along with their homemade black jackets, pants, and shoes, all of the men in the colony who were married, as were these four, grew beards, a further testimony to their commitment to God and the community.2 The women, in turn, wore ankle-length skirts, often plaid or speckled with flowers. Their hair, grown long, was covered at all times by polka-dotted kerchiefs, in deference to their husbands, the head of the household, and to God, the father of all. The children followed the lead of their parents, looking like little adults (except for their bare feet in the summer months). The people of Rockport, by any measure, cut a modest appearance. Their neighbors back in 1918 worried that looks could be deceiving. The Hutterites appeared to be a secretive people, different in dangerous ways. For one thing, the Hutterite farms dwarfed the properties of virtually every other landholder along the fertile James River Valley in the southeastern part of South Dakota, home to sixteen colonies. As a local newspaper re- Called to Duty 3 minded South Dakotans that spring, “their lands are among the richest in the state.”3 Even so, they were rumored to have intentionally reduced their planting that spring so they would have enough to feed themselves but nothing to spare for the military. The Rockport Colony consisted of about twenty-five families, numbering 180 members; the colony owned four thousand acres, normally one field after another of wheat growing and cattle grazing. Besides five hundred head of cattle, the colonists owned about 130 horses and 1,500 sheep. They operated their own mill, blacksmith shop, and tannery. The Hutterites managed such large farms, as the neighbors well knew, because...