PERSONAL KNOWLEDGE OF THE EARLY EUROPEAN IMMIGRANT.
GALICIANS AND BUKOWINANS.
SETTLEMENT EAST OF SALTCOATS.
saved their wages and I became their banker and most of their savings
went to purchase a plow or a cow or something for the "faruma".
Each year the settlement extended as friends came out
from Europe until there were several townships fully settled. In a few years they
built better houses, thatched in their own style, some having frame houses
with shingle roofs. They had very good outbuildings as a rule, hauling
the logs in winter from the Duck Mountains, across the Assiniboine River.
Some bought land adjoining their homesteads, and discarded their original
oxen for horses. I found them very good stock men, as they kept every-
thing in good order, getting up in the middle of the night sometimes to
feed them or fix up their bedding. Even their hens laid all winter, and
the eggs were as good as others, but I could not recommend their butter.
Their progress was quite as great as that of any other average settler,
and on the whole they were well-behaved and hospitable. Some however
were a distinctly bad lot, but such are found in all communities.
Re Education :-After they had permanently settled down I still kept
in touch with these colonists and after a few years I induced them to sign
a petition for schools. I had to point out that it would be a benefit to them
to have their children able to speak read and write the language of the
country as it would be a protection for them against, say unscrupulous
horse dealers and others who got them to put their mark to notes far in
excess of the proper amount, took money from them without giving re-
ceipts, and failed to credit them with payments made. They also some-
times got official letters from the Land Office which they could not read
and answer, sometimes having their homesteads cancelled on this account,
although on representation of the facts being made to the proper authori-
ties their homesteads were always restored to them. I also impressed
upon them that the Government would give them grants according to the
standing of the schools and absentee land-owners would also be taxed as
well as themselves for school purposes. This had some weight for there
were some Manitoba and North Western Railway lands which were not
exempt and altogether I succeeded in convincing them that in view of the
great advantages they would gain their school tax would be really light.
In 1906, I think it was I laid out nine school districts and got the settlers
to sign the necessary petitions. The school districts accordingly became
accomplished facts and after their establishment an educated Galician
named Bodrig was sent by the Department of Education from Saskatoon
and he undertook to appoint trustees and soon he got the school districts
going in working order. Unfortunately there were only three men in the
vicinity who were English speaking and they were appointed Secretaries.
I observed that one of them, a carpenter, was going to build the schools
at a much higher figure than was at all necessary, and I induced the De-
partment to cancel the appointments of the trustees, all of whom were
entirely ignorant of English and of the duties of their office. An "Official
Trustee" was then appointed, and a first class and most trustworthy man
for this position found in the person of a man who was farming not far
from the Ruthenian settlement, and who also held a first class certificate
m as soon as they could buy the more modern stuff. They
Bibliography follows:
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