Omaha daily bee., 1896-07-19
Albert Calm,
1922 Farnam
\ BIT or EUROPE IN DAKOTA.
4 Quaint Isolated Colon, West of til
Missouri,

W -"
Missouri.
Away out near the bordor-line of the two
Dakotas, perhaps thirty miles from the Mis-
souri, and seventy from Fort Yates. says a
writer in Harper's Weekly, lies a stretch
of rolling prairie land where lives a colony
of peasants the most remarkable, in certain
ways, to be found in this country. They
are self-isolatcd from the rest Of the world,
save as they communicate through the me-
dium of their marketing place, the little
town Of Eureka. They have established u
small section of Europe in the New World,
and they are very, very slow to merge It
into the type and texture OF the newer civ
i~lization.
Low-roofed and broad are the houses OF
these peasants, veritable homes of earth.
They are not the sod shanties of the west
orn boomer by any means, for these for
eigners have a way of building for the
future. They construct their homes in GU
rious fashion and build them so substan-
TALLY they will last half u century If neces-
sary-last until greater prosperity and
American influences shall call for houses of
wood or stone. When the farmer has de-
cided upon the location of his house. he
ploughs up the heavy sod in the swale at
the foot of one of the low Cotteau hills
and drags 1t to his house in long strips.
This sod is the roof of the house. He has
been making bricks for days. huge clay and
straw bricks, perhaps twelve inches thick
by eighteen inches long. The clay subsoil
dllOIuS material lot a DTlck mat VIII last
for years. After the bricks are sun-dried
they are laid up for his walls, the
joints being properly broken. The inter-
stices between the bricks are filed in with
clay in a soft mass, making the wall solid
and about two feet in thickness. The color
of one Of these walls as you see it on the
prairie is a dark soft gray; Or when, as in
some cases. it is plastered upon the out
side, it is lighter in color. The walls are
probably not more than seven feet high.
From them coarse boards are built to a
ridSe-pole in the center to form a founda-
ton for the sod roof. The sod strips are
ing their grassy furze, and the places be-
tween the strips ere filed in with gravel
and clay In a coarse stucco, making the
roof rain and cold proof.
These peasants are not only unique be-
cause they have brought into America a
small section of Europe, maintaining their
language and customs intact, but they have
a claim to a uniqueness of another kind, in
that they haul to market in the town Of
Eureka more grain than Is marketed in any
other primary wheat market in the world.
During the period between the day when
the first load of wheat was drawn into Eu-
reka last autumn and the time when tho
last load of the season was hauled. in mid
February, there were unloaded from the
wagons of these peasants 1000, 900 bushels
of wheat. In 1883 about 900, 900 bushels
were marketed. Four years later this had
been increased to 1000, 600 bushels, and this
year, so prodigious is the crop, another
million bushels was added. Out of the
wagons of these German Russian peasants,
who learned their trade of wheat-growing
in the old world, is unloaded more wheat
year by year than at any other place in
the world.