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detriment to the country and contrary to modem progress. 26 The Metis were regarded as thriftless, pleasure loving, nomadic, and unable to adjust to commercial agriculture. 27

By 1888 over 90 percent of Metis land had been alienated both legally and illegally and many had left the province. The Mennonites on the other hand prospered on their reserves, which were closed to outside settlement, and were considered progressive, honest, and industrious; people who paid off their debts, paid in cash and were prudent buyers. 28 Thus, while Elder Johann Wiebe may have seen Mennonite immigra­ tion to Manitoba as a means of halting growing secularism and moderni­ ty, Winnipeg businessmen saw the Mennonites as paragons of modem development. To some extent both were right.

FOOTNOTES FOR CHAPTER 1

1. Winnipeg Free Press, Oct. 3, 1879. No specific date is given for the inspection but it occurred before the arrival of immigrants in July of 1875.

2. O.I.e. 957. Report of the Committee of the Privy Council approved by his excellency the Governor General on the 13th of August 1873. This document is reproduced in Peter D. Zacharias, Reinland: An Experience in Community. (Reinland Centennial Committee, 1976), page 30.

  1. Canada. Annual Report, Department of Agriculture and Immigration, 1876.
  2. Memoirs of Charles Cavelear quoted by Elizabeth Bergen in The Red River Valley .

Echo, November 25, 1970.

  1. Peter D. Zacharias, op. cit., page 41.
  1. Leonard Doell, "Walhalla Trail", an unpublished paper on file at the Mennonite Heritage Center Archives, Winnipeg.

7. The Papers of the Palliser Expedition 1857-1860, ed. Irene Sprye, (Toronto: Volume XXXXIV Champlain Society, 1968), pages 102-103.

  1. Jeff Gee, Both Sides of Manitoba, (Nelsonville, 1881), page 106.
  2. Peter D. Zacharias, op, cit., page 43.
  1. John H. Warkentin, "The Mennonite Settlements of Southern Manitoba", (Ph. D. Thesis, University of Toronto, 1960), page 22.

11. Esther Epp-Tiessen, Altona: The Story of a Prairie Town. (Altona: D. W. Friesen and Sons, 1982), page 2.

  1. John H. Warkentin, op. cit., pages 512-519.
  2. E. K. Francis, In Search of Utopia, (Altona: D. W. Friesen and Sons, 1955), page 62.
  1. Frank H. Epp, Mennonites in Canada 1786-1920: The History of a Separate People, (Toronto: Macmillan of Canada, 1975).

IS. E. K. Francis, op. cit., page 20.

16. The Description of Mennonite Life in Russia is taken from E. K. Francis op. cit., and Esther Epp- Tiessen, op. cit.

  1. Frank H. Epp, op. cit., page 200.
  1. A more complete account of the inspection tour can be found in Jacob Y. Schantz, Narrative of a Journey to Manitoba with an Abstract to the Dominion Lands Act, an Extract from the Government Pamphlet on Manitoba, (Ottawa: Department of Agriculture, 1873).
  1. This list of privileges is printed in P. D. Zacharias op. cit., page 19.
  2. Esther Epp- Tiessen, opt. cit., page 12.

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