372 



MANITOBA. 



resentative on earth, and surrounded himself with 

 12 apostles and 12 archangels to do his bidding. 

 Kapustin, who followed him. taught that God in 

 men dwelt in his fullest power in the most godlike 

 men. This power was in him; therefore he was 

 God. He called upon his followers to fall down 

 and worship him. and brought down a flood of 

 hatred and persecution upon the sect. Many of 

 the Doukhobors were cast into prison, and all the 

 powers of the church and the state were directed 



DOUKHOBORS. 



against them. However, they appeared only to 

 thrive under the persecution. In 1801 Alexander 

 I ordered the persecution stopped and released 

 those in the prisons; but he was soon forced to 

 withdraw his kindly treatment, the Doukhobors 

 growing under it even more arrogant and re- 

 fusing to obey the civil laws. Finally the Douk- 

 hobors appealed to the Emperor to settle them 

 in some uninhabited place where they might wor- 

 ship after their own belief without offending the 

 orthodox. They were permitted to remove to the 

 region north of the Sea of Azov, and here thou- 

 sands of them built homes for themselves. But 

 here, official restraint being removed, they were 

 even more subject to the brutality and passions 

 of their leaders, and within a few years condi- 

 tions became so horrible that the Government, 

 nbout 1835. removed the Doukhobors to what was 

 then the wilderness of Transcaucasia. Here they 

 have lived ever since, having almost no relations 

 other than business with the people around them. 

 In recent years, while they have followed implicit- 

 ly the direction of their leaders in religious mat- 

 ters, under the careful surveillance of the Gov- 

 ernment officials many of the social and political 

 abuses that they suffered formerly have been 

 done away with. 



In 1887 the sect was divided by a rival candi- 

 <1noy for the leadership, and the bitterness of this 

 fi.!*ht and the hard feelings growing out of it 

 drove part of this unhappy people to seek homes 



and peace in a new *land. Negotiations were 

 opened with several governments in an endeavor 

 to establish them in a colony, and finally they 

 were accepted by Canada. The first colony, 2,000 

 in number, arrived early in 1899, under the lead- 

 ership of Count Leo Tolstoi, who with other 

 philanthropists had become interested in their 

 welfare, and were granted free lands in Mani- 

 toba. The first impressions of the Doukhobors 

 were most favorable, and in the following year 

 their number was increased by additional immi- 

 gration to about 7,000 in Manitoba and the 

 Northwest Territories. The Government loaned 

 to the poorer families seed, plows, and other fa- 

 cilities for making their first crop. About three- 

 fourths of this loan was repaid out of the crop 

 of 1900. They had the esteem of all their neigh- 

 bors, filled the schools with their children, and 

 were rapidly learning to speak and read the Eng- 

 lish language. The climate, so similar to that of 

 their old home in the highlands of Transcau- 

 casia, seemed especially adapted to their advance- 

 ment, and from poverty they had struggled into 

 comfortable circumstances and many were saving 

 money. A few realized the necessity of adapting 

 their beliefs to their new conditions of life ; but the 

 great majority, particularly those of the Swan 

 river settlements, in Manitoba, and about York- 

 ton, Assiniboia, clung to the old doctrines. In 

 addition they adopted a vegetarian diet, refusing 

 not only to eat butter, eggs, or any article of 

 food that was even remotely connected with an 

 animal, but as well to wear any clothing of 

 animal origin or to use cattle or horses as beasts 

 of burden. 



Their first difference with the Canadian Gov- 

 ernment came about through their refusal to take 

 the patents for their land individually, insisting 

 that all holdings should be communal. Then they 

 refused to comply with the laws of the Dominion 

 in regard to marriage and divorce, insisting upon 

 settling all these questions according to con- 

 science and their interpretation of the Bible. In 

 1901 the Swan river Doukhobors, mindful of 

 their lifelong feud with the Russian Government, 

 refused to pay the school taxes. Their stock 

 was seized and sold to meet the arrears, and 

 this seems to have taught them a permanent les-' 

 son. They are gradually adopting the use of ani- 

 mals for heavy farm work, and very few, if any 

 of them, joined their brethren in the uprising 

 of 1902. Their strange beliefs excited much curi- 

 osity and interest, but no serious trouble was ex- 

 pected until the summer of 1902, when, without 

 warning, they turned all their horses, cattle, and 

 sheep loose upon the prairies, and men and wom- 

 en took their places at the plow and hauled the 

 heavy loads of farm produce to the towns, in some- 

 instances 50 miles distant. The mounted polici 

 rounded up the herds, and the stock was sold 

 by the Government and the money put to the 

 credit of the communities. The harvest was gath- 

 ered with reaping-hooks and thrashed out with 

 flails. During the autumn agitators continued to 

 work among them, and the people, earnest in 

 their faith and unshaken in their belief in their 

 leaders, gathered in great meetings. From timr. 

 to time came rumors of villages deserted, and o: 

 mobs of fanatics preparing for a descent upon 

 Yorkton in a great pilgrimage to seek Jrsn~. 

 from whom they believed themselves to have re- 

 ceived a message that his second coming was near 

 at hand. These rumors were denied persistently 

 by the authorities, who must have known th<; 

 truth, and the result was that when, on the nigh^ 

 of Oct. 27, between 1.500 and 2,000 Doukhobors, 

 men, women, and children, camped within 3 miles 



