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Why were Mennonites blamed for a Russian invasion?

By Chelsie Vandaveer

July 2, 2002

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In 1862, Congress passed the Homestead Act. The Great Plains were open to settlers—Civil War refugees, the landless, and immigrants. In the 1870s, Mennonite farmers left Russia and choose the North American prairie, land not all that different from their farms in Russia.

Mennonite Community Art Print Larry Towell
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The Mennonites brought wheat, an agricultural revolution to North America. (See Plants that Changed History, September 11, 2001) But they did not find the people welcoming or the land easy to settle. They were discriminated against in business transactions and mocked when visiting towns. The prairie grasses resisted plowing.

In 1877, Mennonites in South Dakota imported flax seed from Russia. They recognized the weed that came with it. The Russian thistle or tumbleweed (Salsola kali Linnaeus, now known as S. tragus) had come to the Great Plains. The leaves are modified into sharp spines that lacerated the legs of cattle and horses and pierced through leather work gloves. The plants jammed machinery and burned readily. If the wind was blowing, the weeds tumbled. If they were burning, they spread fires to crops, barns, and homes.

Henry David Thoreau American Writer Giclee Print
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Russian thistle had no natural enemies and little competition on plowed fields. The wind-swept prairie allowed rapid spread of the seed. By 1891, the eastern half of South Dakota was so infested that farmers abandoned their land. Even towns and cities had Russian thistle in the cracks of streets and sidewalks.

By 1895, the plants had spread to New Mexico. Botanists were not even sure what the plant was. E.O. Wooton, the Agricultural Experiment Station botanist, stated, "Kill it first...whatever it may be....There is but one treatment...utter extermination from New Mexico...." (Campus News, June 1996, NMSU)

James A. Young (Scientific American, March 1991) wrote, "The tumbleweed invasion carried an ugly social undertone: many believed that Russian Mennonites had deliberately introduced the weed...supposedly a retaliation for the derision...." But it was a matter of time—the plant was already in North America. Henry David Thoreau had identified Salsola in July, 1851 on the beaches of Gurnet in Massachusetts.

The University of Chicago has a historic photograph of Russian thistle taken in 1913 in Colorado. To view the photograph, click on the link:

http://www.lib.uchicago.edu/aep/co/aep-cos5.jpg

The State Herbarium of the University of Wisconsin, Madison has a close-up of the spines of Russian thistle. To view, click on the link:

http://www.botany.wisc.edu/wisflora/scripts/detail.asp?SpCode=SALTRA

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