It was an interesting surprise. I had promised myself I would make a
special pilgrimage some day to Western Canada just to find out what the
Dukhobors thought about life, and how they were getting on now. And
then to come on them accidentally.
The Dukhobors, or “Spirit wrestlers,” are a Russian religious community
brought to Canada in 1898. They claim to have been in existence in
Russia for over three hundred years. They are primitive Christians akin
to Quakers, but more uncompromising. They are Communists, pacifists,
anti-state, anti-church, anti-law. Theologically they consider Christ
as a good man and teacher, but not divine. Tolstoy’s teachings show
him very close to the Dukhobors in theory. He greatly sympathised with
them in the persecution which they suffered at the hands of the Russian
Government, and it was in part due to him, and more largely to the
Society of Friends in England, that the expatriation of the Dukhobors
was accomplished. Tolstoy is said to have put aside the profits of his
novel _Resurrection_ to defray in part the expenses of transporting the
Russians. There are several thousand of them, and first they were taken
to Cyprus where at least the British Navy got acquainted with them, as
they were naturally a curiosity. Cyprus was not suitable, and so Canada
was chosen for a habitat. The community was taken to Saskatchewan, and
later migrated in large part to British Columbia. They did not find
their path strewn with roses in Canada, and have had a hard time.
But despite persecution they have prospered. They are notorious for a
naked procession they once made “in quest of the Messiah” some forty
miles in bitter winter weather, displaying “the naked truth” to the
Canadians--the pilgrimage to Yorktown which has been described with
much gusto in the American and Canadian Press. They have refused to
take steps to relinquish their Russian nationality, refused to fight,
refused to pay taxes. So naturally they have been a thorn in the side
of the Canadian.
The Rocky Mountains stretching away in their majesty must remind
some Russians of the grand array of the Caucasus as seen from the
north--and the prairie is the steppe. Far away you discern the white
and brown buildings of a settlement, and then, ten times as large as
anything else, pale-blue grain-elevators. The circumambient moor is
many coloured, and a dove-coloured sky is flecked with softest cloud.
There are snow fences at many points of the road to protect from drifts
in winter. A neverceasing wind which brings no rain is driving over
the corn-fields. As you approach the village you begin to see Russian
peasant men and women working on the fields hoisting the wheat-sheaves
to the harvesting carts, hoisting the sheaves to the top of the
stacks. A stalwart peasant-wife in cottons stands on top of the stack,
pitchfork in her hand, and she catches the sheaves as they come up to
her. The grain-elevators rise mightily into vision, and then the words
printed on them in large black letters--=THE CHRISTIAN COMMUNITY OF
UNIVERSAL BROTHERHOOD=.
I soon met Pavel Potapof, the local headman, and I talked in Russian
with a number of men and women who spoke no other language. They were
raising wheat for themselves and for their wheatless brethren who live
in the lumbering camps and villages of British Columbia, but represent
a sort of a half-way colony between the original Verigin, Saskatchewan,
and the main settlement of Brilliant, British Columbia.
Potapof was a boy at Cyprus, where his father enjoyed some authority.
He is now a man in his thirties with brown moustache and close-clipped
chin. If you are a Dukhobor you may not shave but you may clip with the
shears. He remembered touching a Mr. St. John at Cyprus, who used to
call him Pavlushka.
Potapof spoke Russian with a soft Little-Russian accent, all g’s being
h’s. He came from Tiflis province, and I talked first of the Caucasus,
comparing them with the Rockies. Then naturally we discussed Russia,
and a curious crowd gathered about us. Scarcely any spoke English--all
were Russian subjects, and I much wondered what they thought of the
Bolshevik revolution. For they also are Communists. I soon learned that
an appeal had been made to them on behalf of the Bolsheviks to help
to stem the famine in Russia. Some of the Dukhobors were for sending
grain, some not. They blamed the Bolsheviks for their “two million men
under arms.”
Most of them said: “Let those who are richer in Russia give to
those who are poorer; there’ll be enough to go round.” Imagination
did not show them the ghastly ruin of contemporary Russia, where,
except for a handful of Soviet commissaries, there are no rich, no
“better-off” people. Most of them also said: “Let them lay down their
arms, and then we’ll think of feeding them.” But their deliberations
crystallised in the following way. They decided on a symbolic act.
They visited all their Ruthenian and Galician neighbours and any
one who had a war-trophy to spare, and they made thus a collection
of rifles, shotguns, pistols--some three hundred or more weapons.
These they burned in a heap. Then they sent a wireless message to the
Russian people describing this act, and added further the monition: “Do
likewise; burn your rifles, and return to work!”
“They murdered Nikolai (rubili Nikolai) and his family for liberty,”
said Potapof. “But now clearly there is much less liberty than ever
there was before.”
Nevertheless I thought I detected a curious home-sickness among many of
them. The violent rumours and persistent bad news of Russia comes to a
primitive community that cannot read in a more disturbing and dramatic
way than through newspapers. They complained sadly of conditions in
Canada; of droughts, of plagues of grasshoppers, of bygone hardships
and persecutions in Saskatchewan.
“Here there will be a Bolshevik revolution too,” said one. “We shall
not take part in it. But we know it is preparing. There is much
discontent in the neighbouring settlements and in the mines. Oh yes,
there is trouble brewing here too.”
This Dukhobor had been talking to brother Poles and Ruthenians, but he
was quite out of perspective. I asked how the Dukhobors had faced under
the Conscription Act. Apparently they did not suffer much; Canada did
not trouble the Dukhobors. They had an easier time than their brothers
the Mennonites in the United States. They told me there had been a
considerable influx of Mennonites by way of the unguarded line: they
also are pacifists and utterly oppose to personal service in war. So
struck are they by what happened to them in America through the war
that there is much talk of their deserting both Canada and the States
and seeking a refuge in Mexico.
The Dukhobors, however, have a strong hold in Canada, and as long as
Peter Verigin, their unofficial patriarch and leader, lives, they will
most probably hold on to their settlements in British Columbia and
Saskatchewan. Perhaps in a new era, a new Russia may again take the
Dukhobors to herself. Canada does not assimilate them. They do not
assimilate Canada. And they are, and they feel, as Dostoievsky said,
like “a slice cut out of a loaf.”
[Illustration]
_Fancy meeting the Dukhobors
Up in the Rockies:
A bit of old Russia
Planted up there to meet me!
Sure next time when I go to the Caucasus
I’ll look to find a batch of English there,
Trying to live their unmolested lives
Under the free institutions
Of old Russia._
_Tolstoy, in his story of the old pilgrim,
Taught you could find Jerusalem in your native village,
And did not need to pilgrimage afar.
But he did not say you could find freedom
In your own village--in your own heart.
O no, that’s political,
You must go a long way to find that._
[Illustration: WHEREVER THEY LOCATE THEY BUILD TEMPLES]
XXXVII. A VISIT TO THE MORMONS
WE tramped from ranch to ranch by the rutty roads that skirt the
sections, walked away from the mountain-walls, and ever as we went
the terrain extended. The sky had become wider; no rocky walls closed
us in. The backs of our necks became swollen from the unusual heat
of the sun on them. We kicked up dust as we walked, dust again!
Our eyes traversed the scene to light, not on cascades or possible
camping-grounds, but on far-away farmhouses. We met the oats and
wheat and barley fields striving over the moors, and walked till all
moor disappeared, till there was nothing in front of us but gold.
Made dream-like by the forest fires, the long range of the Rockies
seemed unreal--the mountains which we had climbed became remote and
shadowy--and not part of our destiny. Our only reality was golden
Alberta, which seemed to extend to infinitude, the plateau only
gradually losing its altitude, unfolding and undulating downward--one
vast resplendent area of golden harvest fields.
The sun gleamed on numberless shocks on the right, on the left, and
ahead, and the whole horizon was massed with newly mobilised golden
armies. We walked the rutty roads and were exhilarated, and counted the
wheatfields which we passed, knowing that each, being a whole section,
was a whole mile long.
We discussed a tragical line in one of Lindsay’s poems:
Election night at midnight
Boy Bryan’s defeat.
Defeat of Western silver,
Defeat of the wheat
... Defeat of the aspen groves of Colorado valleys,
The blue-bells of the Rockies,
And blue bonnets of old Texas
By the Pittsburg alleys.
Defeat of the wheat! How tragical that sounds in the soul, how
calamitous and appalling! It is like the cutting off of golden youth,
the extinction of all our dreams.
* * * * *
WE boiled our pot by the side of the road; we sought milk and bread at
farmhouses; we slept at night in the wheat with shocks piled on three
sides of us to keep out the wind, and a broken shock underneath us to
keep us soft--and the night sky above us was of swans’ plumage, and all
the golden stalks and stubble about us and above us were exaggerated
among the stars.
Night was very different on the plains from night in the mountains. No
sound of waters, no castellated peaks rising in the moonlight, no sense
of vast unevenness and disjected rocks; but instead, a feeling of being
in a great encampment where the swarming shocks of wheat were tents,
the tents of such a host that the numbers took away one’s breath. The
poet rejoiced. He loved it. The odour of the yellow stalks was a new
breath of life to him--for he was a prairie boy.
The dawn-twilight was long and quiet, and the mornings were serene.
No workers were in sight. The disparity in numbers between men and
wheat was remarkable to my eyes. In Russia, the whole plain would have
been alive with the gay cottons of peasant lads and lasses. But here,
harvesting machinery displaces whole populations of men and women.
Indians began to be numerous on the road as we approached the Blood
Reservation, Indian farm-wagons with women and children sprawling on
the hay at the bottom, and then Indians on horseback, all one piece
with their horses. We left the golden grain behind and crossed the
Reserve. Vachel explained what a squaw-man is--a white who marries an
Indian girl in order to get hold of her portion of land, the Indians of
to-day being almost all of them endowed with land by the Government. We
found again the Kootenai, now brawling through the plains, and bathed
again, and reverted in spirit to those mountains. Then we tramped from
tent to tent across the green wilderness where the Indians lived.
Indian boys in many-coloured garments pranced on their horses, chased
lines of cattle and horses, and kept the lines straight by galloping
incessantly between them from left to right to one end of the line, and
then right to left to the other end.
We met Indians in voluminous seedy clothes, walking with a stoop; men
with gloomy ruminating faces who tried to avoid contact with a white
man. We talked to them; they raised their red romantic faces and glared
at us like owls startled by light. They could not speak English, so
they answered nothing, but just turned out of our way and slouched on.
Or the livelier ones made signs to us. The stout squaws stared at us.
The slender girls on their horses were almost indistinguishable from
boys.
* * * * *
WHAT a beaten-down and untidy place a Reservation is, strewn with
jetsam from the wigwam, hoofed till not a flower remains! The Indians
spend more time on horseback than on foot--they can’t farm, or
won’t farm, and possess only the roughest of comforts. We came to a
Government Practice Farm where Indians were being taught, and saw
squaws working there--but very little sign of decent cultivation on
the reservations. The Indian asks enough on which to live. He wants no
more, will work for no more. He makes plentiful use of canned foods,
and lives from hand to mouth. Hence you never hear of Indian cooks.
It is curious to contrast the genius of the negro for cooking and the
absence of a taste for cooking in the Indians.
* * * * *
AFTER the Indians we came to the Mormons. They were as much surprised
as the Dukhobors. How should Mormons be here? Perhaps we are the first
to make the discovery that the Mormons have invaded Canada. These
are the first Mormons to invite the shelter of the Empire. As usual,
they have made their settlement in a very obscure part, far from the
centre of authority. And if trouble should arise they have only to trek
through the Rockies, and then Uncle Sam and Senator Smoot will protect
them.
We were regaled at farmhouses by sweet Mormon brides, who gave us
bannocks, who gave us of their simmering greengages out of the great
cauldron on the stove. Elders on horseback very politely, and with
many details, showed us the way to Cardston and the Mormon Temple. We
were happily and sympathetically disposed towards the Mormons, and
Vachel, who has taught the Salt-Lake-City girls to dance whilst he
chanted to them “The Queen of Sheba,” has a soft spot in his heart for
the sect. It was really started by a renegade preacher from his own
sect of Disciples, Sidney Rigdon, who revised the unsaleable manuscript
of a novel called _The Book of Mormon_. He conspired with Joseph Smith,
who discovered the book written in aboriginal American hieroglyphics
on gold plates and translated it by the aid of certain miraculous
spectacles into King’s English, or I should say President’s English,
who was murdered; who therefore gave way to Brigham Young, to whom were
revealed many mysteries.
“They are a whole lot nearer to Mahometanism than to Christianity,”
said Vachel. “I think a Mahometan mission to the Mormons might not be a
bad idea as a step on the road towards Christianity.”
* * * * *
WE sat discussing this on the banks of the Kootenai, and I was
facetious:
“Ye Mormons, there is no god but God, and Mahomet is His prophet.
Whereas in Christ ye are now living in adultery and sin, in Mahomet ye
are pure men and women. By Christ, in the after-life there is neither
marriage nor giving in marriage, but in Mahomet connubial bliss for
evermore, attended by your houris and your wives. Don’t say no. Think
it over and I’ll call this afternoon!”
“_Put that in_,” said Vachel. “I think they’ve derived a good deal
from the phallic religions too. They’ve made a much bigger thing of
Mormonism than it was in the days of Joseph Smith. It has got hold of
the sex mysteries. There’s a whole lot of masonry in it. The common
sort of condemnation of the Mormons is all that’s ever been attempted
by way of criticism of them. They’ve been stoned out of all the Middle
West. We have even in Springfield in the Fair-grounds one of their
altars taken from Nauvoo, Illinois, from which they were chased. They
were a mistaken people--but they learned much through tribulation.”
The poet is by temperament on the side of any one or any institution
which happens to be violently attacked. He was greatly interested by
Mormonism, so I naturally heard from him many things in favour of it.
First of all, he felt it had a great future in America--it was not a
dying cult.
“One side of it is getting very popular,” I interjected, with some
mirth. “It’s the word of abuse in England from an injured wife to her
husband--‘_You--Mormon!_’”
“Well, the idea of polygamy does make a strong appeal to the male,”
said the poet. “And the women feel happy in it when it is an accepted
convention.”
“You mean, women only object to clandestine polygamy?”
“There is always jealousy,” said my companion. “But that is another
matter. What I meant about the future of Mormonism did not refer
to polygamy so much. But it’s our first real American religion. It
started in America. It pretends to give American religious traditions.
According to Mormon, one of the lost tribes of Israel came to South
America. Mormonism links America to both Noah and Adam and to the
hand of God. In their belief, too, Christ came to America--He did not
wait till 1492 for Columbus to discover it first. He was here before
Columbus. In Mormonism America is presented with a whole American
tradition, going as far back as the Old World traditions, embodied in
the Old and New Testaments.”
* * * * *
CARDSTON, which at length we reached, is largely a Mormon city. The
Temple, a remarkable structure, exteriorily chaste and beautiful,
dominates the scene, and the clouds rest upon it, obscuring its upper
storeys in cloudy weather. It is not used for general worship; for
that purpose there is a sufficiently ugly tabernacle. It is almost
exclusively for the Mormon sacraments, the sealing of wives and
children, and for the meditational recreation of the elders. Once the
building has been completed and consecrated it will remain inaccessible
to outsiders, but in order to avert suspicion, visitors are shown
over it until that time. We were lucky, as the Temple is very nearly
finished, and it is a rare experience for an outsider to gain access.
There are only eight Mormon Temples in the world, and the rites
performed therein are entirely secret.
The town is mostly inhabited by Mormons, and the great business “pull”
of the sect is evidenced in the technical and structural growth of the
place. The land between the city and the reservations is theirs, and
also much that lies beyond. A strong propaganda for the sect is carried
on all over America, and also in England and in Europe. Women converts
seem especially desired. On the other hand, men of proved sincerity or
simplicity are not rejected. The Mormons have land at their disposal,
and they exert considerable influence on settlers and pioneers of
the West. The elders help to organise business and to mormonise the
community as much as possible. They can be of great help to any young
Mormon starting life. On the other hand strange dooms are said to await
any Mormons who give away their secrets, and apostasy is infrequent.
Some of them are, however, incautious. In my room at the hotel I found
a heap of correspondence left there by the last man who had been in
occupation. It was perhaps indelicate to pry into a Mormon’s private
affairs, but I confess to a human weakness of curiosity under the
circumstances. Here was the basic material for a novel on the Mormons;
letters from one pal to another, letters from girls, sweet letters,
despairing letters, telegrams. Technically there is not supposed to be
polygamy any more, and legally there is not, but in reality something
of the sort goes on, as may be judged from the following letter I
transcribe, one of a packet I brought from Cardston.
S----D,
Mo.
DEAR ----,
I received your letter written on the 21st from Ladysmith, B.C.,
yesterday, but I worked late last night and I had an answer to one
of Ruth’s letters to write that I had put off for a week. So it was
pretty near time to get up rather than to go to bed, but I will just
drop a hurried line to let you know I still live.
I sure am glad to hear you are able to save a little because I also
am trying to save a few pennies also and it sure comes hard. I also
am glad to hear you are in a business that you like but you failed
to tell me just what your line of selling is. What do you sell? buck
handkerchiefs or iron toothpicks. Does Dan travel with you also.
It sure is great to be able to see a lot of the world at some one
else’s expense and your pleasure. I suppose S----d is about like
Vancouver; rainy and not worth a dam. It sure has rained a lot here
in the last few weeks. I believe we have had more rain here this
month than Utah has in a year.
About my wife in Utah. I receive letters regularly. Eight or nine
days apart as regular as 8 o’clock comes in the morning. Every 8
or 9 days I get a letter and just that often I get a letter from
home also. I am going to try to get a vacation and get enough money
to take me back to Utah next summer. I don’t know if I can or not
because I will have to have an operation on my nose right away
because I always have a cold as it is. If I do not keep on having
this cold I now have I will not have the operation, but if it does
not leave me pretty soon I will have the bone taken out and doubtless
lose my chance of getting home.
I sure am glad you appreciate Peggy by now. You know, old Pal, that
you never miss the water till the well runs dry, and it sure is
true when a fellow leaves his friends and is out alone. You sure
appreciate what you did have when it is gone completely. I believe
that a fellow must live a life like we are to really appreciate the
good things in life anyhow. If we did not taste of the sour things
the sweet ones would seem sour to us. By gosh it sure is true in one
respect I miss some one to darn my sox. I try to do it myself but it
is slow work and I get so (nervous?) Try and imagine me sitting all
night darning sox. It sure is a bellina (? hellish) job. I don’t like
it at all.
Well, old pal, I have a Missouri wife now so S----d seems to be a
pretty good place after all. She is a girl I met in church and is
about the size and looks about like Ruth W----. Some girl I will say.
We have been to a couple of parties and to a couple of shows in two
weeks beside being at her place all day last Sunday. Sunday we are
going to have a picnic and take a few pictures, and Monday night a
large masquerade party is on and we are going to it also. So you see
I stop her right off and she don’t object either, I don’t believe.
I wrote W---- a letter on the 3rd of this month and as yet I have
not received a letter. I guess he wanted to have a good time while
his “heaven” lasts, and I don’t blame him either. I believe he is a
little worried over his mission and rather hates to go, but I believe
he will be alright.
I am getting along fine here. I order all the shoes here so I am
the shoe desk manager. The boss gives me all the shoe mail, and I
just order what I want and leave the rest. It is quite a large job,
but our store is not quite as large as Salt Lake’s, but the shoe
department could keep a regular man busy. So you see I am doing fine.
To-morrow is pay-day and I also get a nice raise, so I have no kick
except to darn my sox. They are the greatest worry I have had.
Well, old pal, I gave this letter and your last one pretty good
service considering all the work we have now that the winter business
is just opening up. Here it is after 12.30 again, so I will go to bed
and get up again at 6 a. m. Try to be good, old pal, and don’t do
anything I wouldn’t--Your old pal,
ED.
* * * * *
YOU cannot learn much of the ways of the Mormons by asking them, but
when one of them leaves a whole packet of correspondence behind him in
a hotel he “sure is” giving things away.
We walked up to the Temple at three in the afternoon, the designated
time when visitors are shown round, and punctually at that hour the
doors were opened and the curious were admitted.
“Wherever we locates we builds temples,” said the guide, a curious
old fellow, so illiterate that he strewed the temple floor with his
aitches, an Englishman from the provinces, squat, confidential,
insinuating. “This is the eighth Mormon Temple,” said he. “The ninth is
now rising in Phœnix, Arizona.”
The visitors were mostly farm-women, and Vachel and I looked like a
couple of tramps in their midst. Our clothes hung on us; we held in our
hands a couple of the most weather-beaten of old hats. I was the “big
un” and Vachel was the “little un.” We looked to have a little less
intelligence than gopher-rats.