Migration and Arrival

Unlike other groups, who generally have moved to different countries over a number of years, the Hutterites departed within a short period of time and for a single destination. Between 1874 and 1879, all communal and non-communal Hutterites, a total of some 1,265 individuals, left the Russian Empire (southern Ukraine) for South Dakota. About half established themselves in three Bruderhofs and the others decided to remain non-communal and took up homesteads. Michael Waldner’s group settled in Bon Homme County along the Missouri River, forming the “mother” colony of all Schmiedeleut in North America. (Leut means people; the groups usually took their names from their leaders.) The Dariusleut, under the leadership of Darius Walter, lived at Silver Lake over the winter and established their first colony, called Wolf Creek, in 1875. A third group, who arrived in 1877, also formed a colony, Old Elmspring, in South Dakota. Jacob Wipf, who led this group, was a successful teacher, and the colony has since been known as the Lehrerleut (teacher people). By the end of the 1870s all Hutterites now resided in South Dakota. Most of the non-communal Hutterites, commonly designated Prairieleut, have since joined the Mennonites.

By 1917, when the United States became involved in World War I, there were seventeen colonies in South Dakota and two in Montana with a total population of nearly 2,000. Once again the pacifist Hutterites faced persecution. The United States Selective Service made no provision for conscientious objectors when young Hutterites were called up for service. They were sentenced to prison terms, and the colonies were forbidden to use the German language in schools and were forced to buy liberty bonds, suffering confiscation of their cattle when they refused. Within a year all the colonies except Bon Homme had emigrated to Canada. They established fifteen new colonies in this country: six by the Schmiedeleut in Manitoba and five by the Dariusleut and four by the Lehrerleut in Alberta. Some sites in the United States would remain vacant for twenty or more years. After the war, particularly during the Depression of the 1930s, a few groups moved back to South Dakota.

Sources: John Hofer, The History of the Hutterites (rev. ed., Altona, Man., 1988), 68

1. Lawrence C. Anderson, Maps of Hutterites in USA (Mankato, Minn., 1991)

2. Lawrence C. Anderson, Maps of Hutterite Colonies in Alberta (Mankato, Minn., 1988)

3. Emco Supply, Hutterite Colonies of Manitoba (Winnipeg, 1993)

At the present, practically all Hutterites live on the North American prairies. Since the 1870s they have grown from fewer than 500 individuals in 3 colonies located in a single state to 35,000 in 368 colonies distributed over three provinces and five states. All but one of the Schmiedeleut’s colonies moved to Manitoba in 1918, but since then many members of this group have returned to the United States; the Schmiedeleut is now spread over three states – North and South Dakota and Minnesota – as well as Manitoba. The Dariusleut and Leherleut all left the United States in 1918. Alberta today has the largest number of colonies, and expansions have taken place into Saskatchewan and Montana and to a lesser extent into Washington State.

The largest concentrations of Hutterites are in Alberta (130 colonies) and Manitoba (85 colonies), a situation that has concerned some rural residents of those provinces. As early as 1942, Alberta passed a Land Sales Prohibition Act preventing transfer of land to “enemy aliens, Hutterites and Doukhobors,” and setting restrictions on how close colonies could be from one another and the amount of land that each could acquire. This law has since been repealed because it was judged discriminatory in the courts. Given previous patterns of settlement, further expansion into Saskatchewan, North Dakota, and Minnesota is likely in the future.

The differences between the three leuts are minor. Nevertheless, they hardly associate with each other, nor do they intermarry. As Table 1 demonstrates, as of 1988 nearly 16,000 in 146 colonies were Schmiedeleut, 11,000 in 126 colonies were Dariusleut, and some 8,500 in 96 colonies were Lehrerleut. Roughly two-thirds of the colonies were located in Canada and one-third in the United States. All three leuts were more heavily represented in Canada. The Schmiedeleut were the most evenly divided between the two countries, with 85 colonies in Manitoba and 61 in the United States, mostly in South Dakota. The Dariusleut had 108 colonies in Canada (mostly in Alberta) and only 18 in the United States (predominantly in Montana). The smallest group, the Leherleut, were found in Alberta (46 colonies), Montana (27), and Saskatchewan (23).