The Diaries of John Gregory Bourke Volume 4: July 3, 1880--May 22, 1881

14: The Commission Concludes

262 Chapter 14 ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ The Commission Concludes T heir interviews with the Dakota Poncas completed, the commissioners returned to Washington to prepare their report. Before departing, Riggs, Miles, and Bourke paid a brief visit to the Santee Agency, but their inspection was hindered by a blizzard that kept them confined to the main agency buildings. The storm also disrupted the trains, and during a layover at Marion Junction, Dakota Territory, Bourke had what appears to be his first encounter with the Mennonites who then were immigrating in large numbers into the American Midwest. A pacifist Anabaptist sect, the Mennonites were founded by Menno Simons (1496–1561), a former Roman Catholic priest from the Netherlands, as part of the Radical Reformation movement. By the nineteenth century, though, the vast majority had relocated in Russia, from which they immigrated to North America. Bourke, who tacitly admitted his knowledge was limited, tended to lump all Anabaptists together, attributing to them a common history of violence, communalism, and sexual license practiced by some splinter groups. The most notorious of these was headed by John of Leyden (1509?–1536), born in the Netherlands as Jan Beukelzoon . An Anabaptist leader who seized power in the German city The Commission Concludes 263 of Munster, John proclaimed a theocratic state that encouraged communalism and polygamy. Munster, however, was reconquered by its prince-bishop, Franz von Waldeck, and John of Leyden, together with his associates, Berhard Knipperdolling (whom Bourke also mentioned in passing), and Bernhard Krechting, was publicly executed.1 Despite Bourke’s linking the Mennonites to John of Leyden , there is no indication of a connection with Menno Simons, other than a common origin in the Netherlands. The Mennonites came from the rural areas of northwestern and central Europe. Persecuted by both Roman Catholics and Protestants , they refused to fight back, preferring instead to find a place where they could live in peace. Initially, they settled along the delta of the Vistula, a region shared by the Prussians and Poles, both of whom viewed these hard-working farmers as an economic asset. They turned the delta from swampland into a thriving agricultural region but, in the end, Prussian militarism and renewed persecution prompted them to another move. In the 1780s, they joined thousands of other Germanic immigrants in accepting Catherine the Great’s invitation to settle along the Dnieper and around the Sea of Azov. They lived quietly for almost a century, until 1870, when the Emperor Alexander II determined that religious and ethnic minorities should be incorporated into the mainstream of Russian society. The final blow came a year later, when they became subject to Russian conscription. Learning of the agricultural prospects of the American Midwest, the Mennonites appointed a delegation to investigate. The Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railroad, already realizing the potential, encouraged the move and offered reasonable terms on a large section of its federal right-of-way grant. Between 1873 and 1883, ten thousand Mennonites settled in Kansas, Nebraska, and Dakota Territory, and another eight thousand in Manitoba.2 Back in Washington, Bourke was invited to visit with Maj. John Wesley Powell, head of the newly established Bureau of Ethnology at the Smithsonian Institution. This proved to be one of the turning points of his life. The Ponca Commission held a private conference at the Hubbard House, at noon, but I did not learn its purport. 1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_of_Leyden 2. The Mennonite migration is discussed in Bailes, “The Mennonites Come to Kansas .” 264 The Ponca Question Continues Reverend Mr. Riggs, General Miles and Lieutenant Bourke took sleigh, and started for Santee Agency at 3 P.M. an exceedingly cold, biting wind cut our faces and hands in spite of the heavy fur wraps in which we folded ourselves; the thermometer must have indicated at least -20°F. Our sleigh was made of a wagon on “bobs”,—our team, two half bred ponies which developed such very excellent powers of speed that we made the 14 miles to the Agency in less than 2½ hours, passing most of the way down the Missouri River bottom close under bluffs which yield an inferior quality of building stone, used to some extent at Niobrara, Springfield and other settlements near by. There is considerable timber in the crossing the boundary of the Santee Reservation and we could see many Indian huts, cottages, stables and corrals of log with mud chinking. Revd. Mr...