In the 1930s, the WPA (Works Progress Administration) decided to give literary types some work to do and sent them out to gather oral histories. This reviewer has explored among the microfilm texts they produced and found them uneven. Some of the settlers, or by now the descendants of settlers, who answered the questions gave detailed stories of their experiences on the North Dakota prairies; others stuck to monosyllables. Historian Tweton and English/humanities teacher Albers sorted through some 5,000 of these records and culled 18 stories of Germans from Russia for our reading pleasure. They chose stories of persons who could tell their origins in a Russian village, who knew how it was that they decided to leave and how they made it to the ship in Germany, the nature of their crossing, and the story of the journey to North Dakota and their first years as pioneers on the prairie. Albers and Tweton say they did some light editing (like changing third to first person) but they basically preserved the words of the persons that were interviewed.
Though the experiences of the settlers were often fraught with great difficulty--far more than they anticipated when they set out from Russia--these brief accounts are great fun to read. The immigrants tell of building houses of sod and mud brick, gathering basic farming animals and equipment, struggling to feed themselves and their families, and dealing warily with agents who too often tried to cheat them of their land. The passing of several years brought success to some but continued difficulty to others. Always there were babies, more than one would imagine could live in those circumstances. The subject of loneliness, which other stories say afflicted the women so heavily, rarely comes up; perhaps this is because most of the persons interviewed were men, who seemed more resilient in this respect. Germans from Russia who read this book may recognize family names among the pioneers, and this will add to their enjoyment. Clear black and white pictures are drawn from historic sources.
Most memoirs are written by persons who did not know first hand the grittiest of the pioneering experiences. Albers and Tweton have performed a fine service in making this scattered, hard-to-access material available to a broad audience. This is book four in a series that now numbers six. The others so far are: The Sod-busters, Norwegian Homesteaders, The Cowboys and Ranchers, Native People, and The Townspeople.
Review © 2003 by Edna Boardman
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