Jonathan Wnght. Bruce Coleman. Inc 
with a large family but no school- 
age daughter. Abigail learned to act 
shy in front of adults and to show 
no other emotion unless she was alone 
with the children, joining in their 
rough and boisterous play. Wholly 
submerged in colony life, she found 
it difficult to distance herself suffi- 
ciently to comment on her activities. 
However, the energy it took to “be- 
come” Hutterite was indicated by a 
request she made the only time our 
family was together outside the col- 
ony: “Drive slowly, it is so easy to 
breathe out here.” 
Perhaps because of her experience 
in the colony, today in almost every 
situation, Abigail picks up behavioral 
cues and notices how people are re- 
lating to one another. While she was 
living in the colony, Abigail did not 
want to differ from her peers. She 
passively accepted the “pruning” 
given all the “young, tender plants” 
as she learned the rituals that insure 
the smooth social functioning of the 
group. But because she was an out- 
sider, she knew it was her choice to 
accept the pruning passively. It never 
occurred to her peers to exercise their 
choice, and she realized that they were 
unaware they had a choice. Having 
lived with people socialized not to rec- 
ognize their individual freedom has 
made her sensitive to the lack of 
awareness of the freedom of choice 
exhibited by many individuals in our 
own culture. As she learned to see 
with Hutterite eyes, she realized how 
differently the world can be viewed 
and how from the same set of facts 
different conclusions can be drawn. 
The most important birthday for a 
Hutterite is the fifteenth, for on that 
day the schoolchild becomes an adult, 
moving from the children’s dining 
room to the adult dining room, from 
the children’s group into the adult 
work force. Even the word used to 
identify the child changes: the man- 
del, “little man,” becomes a buah, 
“boy”; the dindla becomes a die-en. 
The adolescent years are a time 
for exploring boundaries. As long 
as their behavior during this period 
does not interfere with the young 
people’s work, adults, remembering 
their own youth, accept it. 
As this is a change involving a single 
individual, it is not celebrated by the 
colony. There is no party, no formal 
recognition, only orderly progress to 
the next step. The colony does not 
administer physical punishment to 
those older than fifteen, and so the 
other children teasingly tell their 
schoolmates that they will get a final 
whipping on their birthday. Instead 
the German teacher gives the fifteen- 
year-olds several religious books, dis- 
cusses their future roles as adults, and 
emphasizes the importance of giving 
cheerful obedience to those who are 
43 
