SLAVS IN AMERICA i79 



(Videm) in north-eastern Italy, and the Coast Lands (Primor- 

 sko) of Austria-Hungary. Their neighbors on the south-west 

 are ItaHans ; on the west and north, Germans; on the east, 

 Germans and Magyars; and towards the south, Italians and 

 their Slavic neighbors, the Croatians. Most of them are bilin- 

 gual, speaking not only the Slovenian but also the German 

 language. For this reason they are not so readily distinguish- 

 able in America as the other Slavs, and have less trouble in 

 assimilating themselves. At home the main centres of their 

 language and literature have been Laibach (Ljubljana), Kla- 

 genfurt (Celovec), Graz (Gradec), and Gorz (Gorica), the 

 latter city being also largely Italian. In America they are 

 sometimes known as Austrians, but are more often known as 

 "Krainer," that being the German adjective of Krain (Car- 

 niola), from whence the larger number of them come to the 

 United States; sometimes the word has even been mispro- 

 nounced and set down as "Griner." The Slovenes became 

 known somewhat early in the history of the United States. 

 Father Frederic Baraga was among the first of them to come 

 here in 1830, and began his missionary work as a priest among 

 the Indians of Michigan, Wisconsin and Minnesota, and finally 

 became the first bishop of Marquette, Michigan. He studied 

 the Indian languages and wrote their grammars and history 

 in his various English, German and Slovenian works. He also 

 published several catechisms and religious works in Slovenian, 

 and brought over several other Slovenian priests. 



In Calumet, Michigan, the Slovenes settled as early as 1856; 

 they first appeared in Chicago and in Iowa about 1863, and in 

 1866 they founded their chief farming colony in Brockway, 

 Minnesota. Here they still preserve their own language and 

 all their minute local peculiarities. They came to Omaha in 

 1868, and in 1873 their present large colony in Joliet, Illinois, 

 was founded. Their earliest settlement in New York was 

 towards the end of 1878, and gradually their numbers have 

 increased until they have churches in Haverstraw and Rock- 

 land Lake, where their language is used. They have also es- 

 tablished farm settlements in Iowa, South Dakota, Idaho, 

 Washington, and in additional places in Minnesota. Their 

 very active immigration began in 1892, and has been (1900- 

 1910) at the rate of from 6,000 to 9,000 annually, but has lately 

 fallen off. The official government statistics class them along 



