|
|
 |
|
 |
|
| ESSAY: MEDIEVAL AMERICANS | |
 February 22, 2001 
|
|
|
|
|
RICHARD RODRIGUEZ: The photograph suspends the sun and stops the wind; the ten-year-old boy balances forever atop a horse in Montana. There are 40,000 Hutterites living today on communal farms and ranches in Canada and America. They constitute the largest communal group in the western hemisphere. But until I saw Laura Wilson's astonishing photographs of the Hutterites of Montana, I barely knew that many Hutterites lived in America any more; I barely knew their story. The Hutterites originated in Switzerland and Austria during the Protestant reformation. Like the Amish and the Mennonites, they are Anabaptists; they reject the notion of a state religion and infant baptism. After a long persecution in Europe, the Hutterites arrived here, on the prairies of Dakota territory in the 1870s. On this beautiful but unsentimental landscape-- a landscape Willa Cather knew-- on hard earth carved by winter wind and spring, the Hutterites found liberty. To the extent that religious refugees come to this country determined to profess their singular faiths, their fellow Americans recognize them. We admire their determination not to bend to the authority of church or state in the old world. Puritans, the most famous religious refugees in American history, came to these shores to escape the state religion of England, to be able freely, to say, "I believe." But like the Puritans before them, the Hutterites would take their liberty in America to mean the freedom to live intensely communal lives -- the freedom to belong. Most of the rest of us who profess a religious faith in America, end up living among people of other religions. We end up relegating the "we believe" to temple or church on Sundays. Maybe that is why so many Americans are suspicious of religious communes. We resent their clannishness. During both world wars, Hutterites were arrested, despite being pacifists, perhaps because they were seen by their neighbors as Germans. To this day, their success is resented, especially when times are hard and the Hutterites, working together, thrive. Hutterite communes share money in common and property. To this day, Hutterites speak the low German of their ancestors. Children do not learn English until first grade and none go to high school. They grow up amidst horses and birds. They know the wildness of nature. But these are not children who remind us of Huck Finn. More powerfully perhaps, they remind us of ancestors, whether here or in the old country, who lived on the land. Or they remind us of when our families were new to America and closely knit, before the oldest boy headed west or the youngest daughter went off and married somebody of another religion. n the one hand, the word "commune" evokes in many Americans the shuddering memory of mass suicides, people so sheepish, following the leader even unto death. But who cannot be moved by these Hutterite faces, the sunnier side of communal life? "Life is hard," a Hutterite woman admits, "but at least no one has to peel a potato alone." That Laura Wilson was allowed to take these photographs over several years, is indication of a loosening, even within this relatively strict commune. Already there are stories of young men going off, not returning -- stories of men marrying women from another faith and not being allowed back. And these young women who wear no jewelry are naming their daughters Crystal and Tiffany. We on the outside are changing their lives; though the Hutterites in these photographs do not listen to radio or watch television, so they will not be aware that we are watching them now. They live in a world the rest of us consign to the unrecoverable past. They do not live in the same time zone as the rest of us. The camera clicks. The Hutterite boy is forever ten years old, balanced on the horse. His America is as certain as a medieval village; ours is in flux. I'm Richard Rodriguez. |
 |
        |
|
| Support the kind of journalism done by the NewsHour...Become a member of your local PBS station. | ||
| ||
| PBS Online Privacy Policy Copyright ©1996- MacNeil/Lehrer Productions. All Rights Reserved. | ||
| ||
