Plains Folk

NEWS for North Dakotans
Agriculture Communication, North Dakota State University
7 Morrill Hall, Fargo, ND 58105-5665

January 28, 1999

Plains Folk: Ukrainians Unique, Typical in their Plains Experiences

Tom Isern, Professor of History
North Dakota State University

In 1997 the Ukrainian community of western North Dakota marked the centennial of its founding. During the years 1897 to 1914, a chain migration from the Borschev district of the Galician province in Austria-Hungary brought perhaps 150 families of land-seeking Ukrainian farmers to Billings, Stark, and Dunn counties.

There they constituted "an ethnic island and a micro-community," as told by Theodore Pedeliski, a history professor at the University of North Dakota. Pedeliski presented his recent and fascinating research on the Ukrainian community to the Northern Great Plains History conference last fall. Kinship and community ties were powerful in the Ukrainian settlements of the West River, he notes.

Ethnic identity was bolstered by the churches, both Ukrainian Byzantine Catholic (St. Demetrius and St. Josephat) and Ukrainian Orthodox (Sts. Peter and Paul). At the same time they pulled together, though, the Ukrainians also developed ties of affection to their home on the plains.

"A sense of place and an identification with this landscape," says Pedeliski, "would overlay the ethnic rural community."

Hardly had this process begun when it began to unravel. Pedeliski's major point is this: "The Ukrainian settlements in western North Dakota became host sites for a chain migration of its members to the West Coast of the United States from 1916 onward."

First to go, it appears, was Peter Palaniuk in 1916. He worked in the shipyards of Portland, Ore., and Vancouver, Wash. After that he became a millionaire in the real estate business. A little Dakota-Ukrainian colony came together early in Springfield, Ore.

For the next 20 years Ukrainians trickled west, sometimes prompted by drought. Quite a few entered migrant labor, often on a temporary basis in order to send money home. During the mid-1930s Pedeliski's father, Nicholas, rode the rails west. There was no "wholesale exodus" at this time, however.

Two things stepped up the migration. The first was when the federal government began buying lands deemed "submarginal" in order to block out the Little Missouri National Grassland. Most Ukrainians offered buyouts accepted. Many of those staying behind benefitted from fencing contracts and similar public works, and a few got grazing allotments and made the transition to ranching.

The second impetus was World War II. Young men went to the army or to defense industries. More important was the "exodus of young unmarried women out of the community," young women leaving "almost in droves," removing themselves and also serving the "exploration function" for families. They worked in canneries and in offices, and they married outside the ethnic community. A "gender imbalance" on the order of two young men for every young woman developed in the Dakota settlements.

Here is where we all can learn something. The Ukrainians were a unique ethnic enclave, yes, but their departure from the plains was all too typical of the region as a whole. Women led the way.

This was so with the Ukrainians, says Pedeliski, because the women were thinking for themselves. They saw about them a local community where patrimonial inheritance—turning the farm over only to sons—prevailed, and women were dependent. And they left. Go figure.

###

Source: Tom Isern (701) 231-8339

Editor: Dean Hulse (701) 231-6136