PPERSONAL KNOWLEDGE OF THE EARLY EUROPEAN IMMIGRANT.
THE HUNGARIANS.
About 1885 Count Esterhazy, a Hungarian Nobleman, started the Es-
terhazy colony for Hungarians. The original settlers were mostly from the
States. The settlers were assisted to houses, oxen and implements, which
were charged up to their homesteads. My impression is that the settle-
ment did not do much good as long as supplies were coming from head-
quarters. Myself a homesteader I remember well the first time I drove
through the colony, which was about forty miles from my own place.
There were some frame houses, but the cultivation was negligible. I
was struck with the small patches enclosed with fences made of brush.
Stakes had been driven and the work of interweaving the willows and
brush had been very neatly done. I suspected feminine fingers. The
colony was under the immediate direction of a Hungarian gentleman,
presumably a friend of the Count's, whose name was Julius Vass. Mr.
Vass was postmaster and the representative of the promoters of the
colony. He was a man of education and refinement, perhaps thirty-
five years of age, prematurely bald, a good looking, easy going, pleasant
mannered fellow who had every qualification except the important one of
business ability. He was, if I may use the word, the major-domo of the
colony. His lack of business capacity, combined with a somewhat pleasure
loving disposition, led to disaster. He became involved, and shot himself
to death in a Wapella hotel to the great regret of a large circle of friends,
of whom I am glad to say I was one. When the colonists found that they
had to be self-supporting some moved out, but only in company with
settlers of other classes and nationality. Dry seasons, hail, frost and
fire drove out settlers by the scores and hundreds, but the winnowing
process ceased, new settlers came into the colony and it started to prosper
in good shape. These settlers north of the Qu'Appelle were separated
from their market town of Whitewood by the wide Qu'Appelle Valley.
There were no graded roads, and loaded wagons had to be hauled up
and down the ravines of the valley banks. The craziest looking bridge
I ever saw before or since formed the means of crossing the river. It was
put up by a man from Ontario who kept a stopping place there. You
could repose there, mostly on the floor, if business was good, for fifty
cents a night, and he charged fifty cents a team for crossing the bridge.
The primitive Rialto was built mostly of poplar poles and it required
some courage to trust a team upon it. However, it stood for a season,
perhaps two or three, when it was washed away.
The bridge builder was a talkative man. He once bored me (we were
driving together in a buckboard) for two solid hours with a narration of
how he killed a man in Galt, Ontario, was duly tried for murder, after a
mob had tried to get him away from the sheriff, and acquitted on the
ground of self-defence. As a fact there was no defence about it. His
story to me was that he had an enemy and they met on a raised path on
the outskirts of Galt one night after dark. His enemy knocked against
him; they fought; he knocked his opponent off the sidewalk onto a heap
of sharp stones, where he lay face upwards and senseless, said my in-
formant. "I did not calculate to leave any vacancy (his exact words), so
I jumped about three feet down onto his face and finished him". When
I became a candidate for the N. W. Assembly this cheerful gentleman was
supposed to have influence in the north country and he was one of the
signatories of my nomination papers. It was while electioneering under
his auspices that he told me the above story. He did so with extreme
prosiness of detail, which extended to his jail experiences, trial and ac-
quittal, and seemed to have no idea other than that he had been the hero
of an experience worth telling.
The Hungarian is as a rule a bright, snappy, ambitious man, anxious
to make money, and no one can say that the Hungarians of whom I now am
speaking have not made good. They suffered considerable hardships dur-
ing the hard times, and one winter they endeavored to mitigate their lot
by a bold and distinctly unlawful proceeding. A store at Millwood, in
the Qu'Appelle Valley just over the border in Manitoba, was looted one
Bibliography follows:
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