Biographies, memoirs, interviews, and diaries inevitably include and often exaggerate those parts of the life-story that support the claim of the storyteller, and omit or flatten other parts assumed to be irrelevant or in contradiction to the preferred storyline.
In 1848, the Guardianship Committee for Foreign Colonists President Eugen von Hahn tasked each village administration to work with the schoolteacher to produce an exact historical description of its settlement and key events in its history (note 1). Notably most village histories are silent or say very little about their engagements with their Nogai neighbours whom they had displaced.
Mennonites were fully aware that their colony on the
Molotschna River was on lands of the nomadic Nogai, and that the Nogai had been
forcibly displaced for Greater Russia’s colonizing program. This earlier
history of the land is noted in a few village reports.
“In this location there used to be a large Nogai village. By
order of authorities the Nogai moved away in 1805 and settled in a distance of
12 versts from here and further.” (Lindenau, 99)
“On the location of the present village of Altona there were
once the tent dwellings of the Nogai, the traces of which can still be seen
today [1848] in some raised earthen and dung walls.” (Altona, 115)
“Since the Nogai who lived here do not have houses, but only beehive-like tent huts made of sticks and felt blankets, so-called 'Koschen' [which they transported on their two-wheeled carts from place to place], the first [foreign] settlers found no shelter here, and for the first winter set up earthen huts.” [Before the arrival of Mennonites]“… the Nogai swarmed about with their herds on the open, treeless steppe.” (Muntau, 95; 94; Lindenau, 99)
“The nomadic Tatars who used this steppe had to evacuate the
area by order of the authorities when the Germans [Mennonites] arrived, but
they remained dangerous neighbours” (Rosenort, 126; 128).
“The village land was originally occupied by [Nogai
cattle-herd owners] who vacated the settlement but remained neighbours.” (Blumenort,
128)
“There were no houses in the area, only nomadic Nogai moved
from place to place with their felt huts (called Kibitki) to let their herds
graze the best possible pasture.” (Ohrloff, 162)
“The village was founded in 1821 … The land was uninhabited
at that time and was grazed by the cattle herds of the neighbouring Russians
and Nogai people.” (Gnadenheim, 144)
Because the nomadic Nogai constructed no permanent
buildings, even their “best” grazing lands and temporary village lands were
considered “unoccupied” or “empty.” Their presence was like a “swarm” of
unwelcome steppe creatures that come and go, and their “evacuation,”
displacement and containment was remembered as part of the state’s civilizing
agenda. Mennonites understood their role as a positive force for this vision of
colonization.
The recollections of encounter with the Nogai were consistently negative and paternalistic in the Mennonite village histories.
“[Our] interactions were mostly around horses: the old and
useless ones they bought for slaughter, and the best ones they stole.” (Blumenort,
128)
“At first the Nogai people were very obstructive to the
newcomers in their economic endeavours; they not only disturbed the work in the
fields, but also robbed the few horses that one already had. Whatever else the
bandits could get their hands on from the herds also disappeared. Most thefts
usually occurred in the sowing season.” (Ohrloff, 161; 162)
“Violence and theft were initially perpetrated by the Nogai
neighbours. On April 23, 1811, Jakob Friesen, a farmer in this village, was
attacked on the steppe and almost beaten to death with hammers. Colonists
however rushed to save him from certain death. Horse thefts were particularly
common, causing some colonists to lose fortunes in one night. In April 1813,
ten of the best horses were taken by force in one night.” (Schönau, 97f.)
Typical was Altona—the Mennonite village closest to the
Nogai lands south of Molotschna. Altona resident and District Mayor Klaas Wiens
and Secretary Aron Warkentin changed the original name of the village from
Altonau to Altona; they explained that it was a mix of Low German and High
German words: “alto” (e.g., “all too”) and “nah” (or close), that is: “all too
near” to “the still-feared indigenous Nogai herdsmen,” as the village history
recalls (Altona, 114).
In 1808 the Nogai were “induced” to build villages, settle
permanently and renounce robbery. An “advance in civilization” was slow,
according to another (non-Mennonite) account in 1838. “In short, they are a people
only emerging from barbarism, and have as yet made but the first step towards
habitual industry” (note 2). While Mennonites were rightly worried about horse
theft, it is not surprising that land surveyors were not welcomed by the Nogai.
“A particularly sad event hit this village [Rosenort] in
1811 in the night from April 19 to 20. The settler Jakob Berg, who was a
district secretary, Jakob Wiens, son of Klaas Wiens, and a stranger named Dirk
Reimer, rode across the steppe in the evening on colony business to advance the
surveying of the land. They were attacked and murdered by Tartars. The next day
their corpses were found on the steppe designated to the village of Tiege. When
the stolen items were identified the murderers were discovered.” (Rosenort, 126)
A few villages established in the 1820s and ‘30s note that
the still “empty” Molotschna colony lands were leased by leaders Johann Cornies
or Klaas Wiens and then rented back to the Nogai for grazing “for a monthly
payment” (Lichtfelde, 188; see also Schardau, Elisabethtal, etc.). While
Cornies and colony coffers benefitted from this arrangement, the Nogai did not.
The graciousness of the “nation’s father” is remembered in
village names (Gnadenheim, 144), but not the Nogai who shared land and labour with
them.
By 1848 the wealth and prosperity of Mennonite villages was
enabled by new markets available with the construction of the port of
Berdyansk. That Nogai lands were also expropriated for the port city is not
mentioned in the village histories, nor the fact that many Nogai wagonners were
contracted to cart Mennonite grain to the port.
“Another extremely important event for this area is the establishment of the seaside town of Berdyansk, for which we feel deeply indebted to the high government” (Halbstadt, 91). A footnote added by a later German editor explains that “Berdyansk—a port city since 1837—was founded in 1827 on the site of the former Nogai settlement of Kotur Ogu, and offered colonists the opportunity to export grain abroad, which resulted in a transformation of their entire economy.”
The village reports were written a few months after Johann
Cornies' unexpected and early death in 1848. Cornies' relationship with the
Nogai was of a different scale and very complex. The survey above however offers
a broader account of how Molotschna Mennonites as such remembered and spoke of
their Nogai neighbours with whom they shared the land. The stories support the
narrative of success and prosperity of Mennonites as model colonists on “empty”
lands, and omit or flatten other parts as irrelevant—the Nogai encounters,
their forced displacement, and labour.
Perhaps these histories are helpful for understanding later
Mennonite engagements with Indigenous peoples in North and South America as
well.
---Arnold Neufeldt-Fast
---Notes---
Drawings are from Jean de Baron Reuilly, Travels in the
Crimea, and Along the Shores of the Black Sea, Performed During the Year 1803,
translated from the French (London: R. Phillips, 1807), 55, https://archive.org/details/b29345340_0014/page/54/mode/2up.
See other images in previous posts: https://russianmennonites.blogspot.com/2023/01/islamic-nogai-neighbours.html (and forthcoming).
Note 1: Evgenii von Hahn, “Zirkularaufforderung 43 an
sämtliche Schulzenämter und Schullehrer (January 8, 1848),” in Josef A. Malinowsky,
Die Planerkolonien am Asowschen Meere, Appendix IV, 85–86 (Stuttgart: Ausland
und Heimat Verlag, 1928), 85-86, https://chortitza.org/kb/malinows.pdf. All of
the village histories /quotes in this post come from the collection by
Margarete Woltner, ed., Die Gemeindeberichte von 1848 der deutschen Siedlungen
am Schwarzen Meer (Leipzig: Hirzel, 1941), https://media.chortitza.org/pdf/kb/woltner.pdf.
Note 2: See the 1838 English summary and review of Daniel
Schlatter’s “Life among the Tatars” (Bruchstücke aus einigen Reisen nach dem
südlichen Rußland in den Jahren 1822 bis 1828) in The Athenaeum, no. 553 (June
2, 1838), 388, https://archive.org/details/sim_athenaeum-uk_1838-06-02_553/page/388/mode/2up.
Schlatter’s volume: https://www.e-rara.ch/zuz/content/zoom/7881850.
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