The British steamer, SS Van Dyck, on which Heinrich and Maria Toews, with their ten children and 323 other Canadian Mennonites sailed from New York to Buenos Aires, April 1927. 

 
During and immediately following the first World War, many of Canada's German-speaking Mennonites became fearful of living in a rapidly modernising British country. Their schools, their life in closely knit farming villages, everything they believed in and stood for, seemed threatened. So, heeding the warnings of the older men among them (many of whom had come as refugees from Russia, fifty years earlier), over nine thousand Mennonites sold what they had to move to Mexico and Paraguay, two of Latin America's most backward, war-torn, countries, to make a new beginning.
 
In this part of her story, Maria Toews describes the events leading up to this exodus, and the trip to South America itself. 

Meine Erinnerungen . . . 

After our wedding we lived five months with Heinrich’s parents, Bernhard Toews, in Weidenfeld (on the West Reserve in Manitoba). Then we moved to Altona where we bought a lot and dug a cellar. On top of that we put a shed until we could build our house. Heinrich got work with Jakob Harder, a building contractor, at seventeen cents an hour. In the fall, during the harvesting season he worked with his father and Aaron Friesen on a threshing outfit. While he was out with the crew I would often stay with our neighbours, John Schwartzes, across the street. One night it rained and thundered hard and lightning struck the chimney. It broke into pieces. In November, 1909, Heinrich bought a little book and furniture store in Altona so he could stay home more.

By November 1911 we already had two lovely children, a son Bernhard and a daughter Maria. During this time the Lord allowed me to go through a very hard time of testing, in which I came to know my Saviour, Jesus, as never before. Through many prayers, sleepless nights, and the grace of God I came to believe that my sins were truly forgiven. After this we decided to go and visit my parents in Saskatchewan.

We got to Swift Current in February and rode 30 miles on a sleigh to where my parents lived. One night we spent at the Giesbrechts in Schoenthal, but the next day we got there and what a joyful surprise and reunion after three years! My parents were so glad to see us and their new grandchildren. There was very much snow in Saskatchewan at the time.

After spending a week with my parents my husband got the desire to live there too. We bought a lot at Neville, only three quarters of a mile from my parents’ place, where the railroad was due to arrive by the next year. My sister and her husband Peter Dueck from Manitoba went into partnership with us and we set up a store in Neville. The timber came by train from British Columbia.

First we built a shed at Neville in which we lived until we could finish the store building and two houses. My Father and brothers helped bring supplies with horses and wagons from Swift Current. By fall the railroad was done and business was good.

Four years later the railroad was extended southward and our business got less. Peter Dueck withdrew from it and my husband took on the Chevrolet dealership. We also bought ourselves a car. In October, 1915 we used it to drive to my sister Aganetha’s funeral. She had married Jakob Krahn and died at their place in Dunelm. There was much snow on the road and we had to get out and shovel it off the road many times. We saw how the grain stooks were standing in snow up to their strings. After that we had nice weather to Christmas and the farmers got all their threshing done.

In 1918 we sold our business and moved back to Manitoba. We had five children already and wanted to farm. We rented a farm from Heinrich’s parents and bought ourselves a cow, four horses and a double mouldboard plough. We also bought a wagon, a sleigh, and a buggy with which the children rode to school. Everything was very expensive right after the war.

The next summer we bought a farm, but it was near Rosthern, Saskatchewan. All the buildings were old and run down. Only two rooms of the house were fit to live in. For five hundred dollars we rebuilt the house. That first summer we had heavy rains and our grain in stood in water. We did not get much of a harvest but we still had to pay our taxes and get ready for winter.

Everyone was having hard times. All the Mennonites who had debts outstanding to us from the store in Neville eventually paid up, but hardly anyone else did. When the price of grain went down we lost the farm even though we had paid half of it already. Then we moved back to Manitoba again to help Heinrich’s parents who were both in poor health.

In November 1926 the first of our people began to move to Paraguay in South America. We did not go with them but prepared to leave by 13 April 1927. During the winter we got everything ready. Heinrich’s parents also started to pack their boxes, but in the end they were not healthy enough to accompany us so they stayed behind.

In March 1927 we had our auction sale. Everything we had left was already packed into boxes and we went around to say goodbye to our family-members and friends. On Saturday evening when my husband came home from Altona he had a headache. On Sunday we planned to visit at three places. For the noon meal we were at Franz Giesbrechts, Rose Farm, and in the afternoon went to Peter Martens. My husband's headache kept getting worse. During the evening, while visiting at Abram Friesens it got so bad we went home. Along with the headache he had a fever by this time. The next morning my mother, from Saskatchewan, was to come on the train to Horndean.

Monday morning my husband could not get out of bed for the pain. His face was swollen by this time, so our son Bernhard went with the horse and buggy to get my mother. It had rained very much and the roads were too soft to go with the car. As soon as my mother came she said at once that my husband had shingles. The blisters were already starting to appear all over his face and through his hair. For five days Heinrich was very sick, with a fever of 104 degrees. We stayed with him day and night and wondered how it would go.

We had already sold everything and the group was getting ready to leave. My mother helped us so much. We got enough food ready for us to eat for three days, and packed all our last things. By this time we had ten children. On the afternoon of 12 April 1927 my husband’s brother took us to the station in Altona. Many others were travelling with us on the train. My mother came along with us to Gretna where we told her goodbye and I never saw her after this, but I trust we shall meet in heaven and not have to part again. 

Altona station, Manitoba, Canada, on the day of the exodus. The emigrants left in seven groups for Paraguay in South America.

Heinrich’s father, Bernhard Toews, rode along with us to Grand Forks, North Dakota. There we told him goodbye, also for the last time in this life. My parents were both still living, as were my nine brothers and sisters. I, with my husband and ten children, was the only one of our family to move to South America. My husband’s brothers, the Johann, Jakob, Abram and Cornelius Toews families, and one aunt, the Johann Schroeder family, moved with us.

The night before Easter we arrived at the harbour in New York. We had to hurry out of the train because the ocean steamer was standing ready. With all of us clambering onto the ship at once it was quite a commotion until we all had our cabins, and until we found our baggage so we could lay the little ones down to sleep. Our youngest one, Johann, turned one year old on this trip.

When the ship’s horn sounded and we began to move we all went onto the foredeck. As we pulled away from the docks we saw a man swimming in the waves. Soon a little boat came and they wanted to catch him. The man resisted but they pointed a revolver at him, then he gave himself up. It was the police, and they brought him back onto the ship. It was a criminal who wanted to get back to New York.

The first day on the ship was Easter Sunday. We had our worship meeting in the dining hall. Many were already starting to get sick by this afternoon. In our family only Tina could not look at the water, but I was also feeling funny. By the next day I felt sick and so did a great many others. That night I suffered a miscarriage and bled heavily. We thought I might die on the ship. But God’s mercy and grace allowed me to recover and stay with my family, for which we are deeply grateful.

By the time we got to Rio de Janeiro I was feeling much stronger and was able to be up on deck for the first time. The sun shone beautifully and I stayed up there all day. My husband and our oldest son Bernhard, along with many others, especially the young people from our group, went into the city. They all had a great time. Our oldest daughter Mariechen was sixteen on this trip, and Sara was thirteen. Because I was not well they had to care for the five littlest ones the whole way, washing for them, and feeding them. They were such a great support for me during this time. Tina, nine years old, was seasick almost the whole way, and our six-year-old, Neta, got a cramp in her right side. They were with me almost all the time. But through God’s grace they both got better again. We could feel and see that God was with us the whole way. For this I thank our loving Father in heaven with all my heart. With the Scripture, “Commit your way to God and hope in him, he will do all things well,” we gave ourselves into his protection and leading.

We left Rio de Janeiro at night and the lights of the great city looked beautiful, reflected on the water. We stopped again at Montevideo and then at Buenos Aires in Argentina. In the morning we saw a much smaller ship come alongside and they began to load our trunks and boxes onto it. Then they gave us the order to go down the steps (visible on the picture above) and out onto the smaller vessel. We crossed over on a little walkway with a railing along both sides.

How different these ships were! On the little ship we were to travel upstream to Puerto Casado in Paraguay. The food was so different. Rows of bunks lined both sides of the rooms and bunks stood in the middle. The mattresses were filled with wood shavings and the pillows very hard. We ate on the upper deck at long narrow tables. At Buenos Aires we still had bread but from there on nothing but beef stew and noodles, and small hard galletas. They were something like Zwieback but very hard and tough.

Mennonites on the river steamer, Toro, that carried the Toews family from Argentina to Puerto Casado, in Paraguay. The journey could take from four days to a week, depending on how many times the vessel got stuck on sandbanks or developed mechanical problems.

On the deck we could sit under a canvas to give us a bit of shade and to shelter us from the rain. Even though it was their winter time, the weather was warm and the sun shone nicely much of the time. After seven days on the river we came to Puerto Casado.

There at the harbour we saw many familiar faces; Johann Schroeders, my husband’s cousins, Isaak Funks, and many others we knew. But everyone had turned so dark, burned from the sun, and had lost so much weight. We all went to the immigrant barracks and tents on foot. Our family, with the Johann and Jakob Toews families were all at Isaak Funks for breakfast and for the noon meal. The men went down to the harbour to get our freight.

We had brought collapsible cots along and set them up in the main immigration shed. The sheds were made of palm trunks with a thatched roof and enough space below the eaves to let in light and air. The kitchen had four stoves but with only two lids each, so we quickly made more stoves out of mud bricks outside.

After four days the men had our tents set up outside. We had two tents for sleeping and Father and the boys made a large make-shift roof under which we cooked and ate. We also made an oven in which to bake bread. Our next door neighbours in the tent village the Johann Toews family on one side and my cousin the Jakob Zacharias family on the other.

One of the large sheds we used as our meetinghouse where we celebrated our first Dankfest (Thanksgiving Meeting) in gratitude to God for having brought all of us safely to this place.

The day we got to Puerto Casado was the funeral of Peter Harder. They had already buried 26 children in the camp before we got there, but this was the first of the grown people. Within the next five months we buried 83. Altogether 121 of our people died from typhus and dysentery at Puerto Casado, and many more died in the camps we made further inland while we waited for our land to get measured out. Seventeen died at Pozo Azul, eight in Hoffnungsfeld, ten in Palo Blanco, and twelve in Loma Plata. One funeral had barely ended before the next one began, but none from our family died. Of the 1, 778 people who came the twelve thousand miles from Canada, 335 got discouraged and went back before they ever saw the place where we were supposed to live.

Fred Engen, one of the men from the company (the Corporación Paraguaya) under which we settled in this country wanted to take his truck inland, into the Chaco. But it had rained much and water was standing in lakes between the trees. My husband thought they could drag the truck with several yoke of oxen and high-wheeled carts. Fred took the suggestion and my husband went along to help him.

We found a German cattle rancher who had some chickens. We got twelve chickens from him and bought ourselves a yoke of oxen and some young cattle in Puerto Casado. Also a cow but she didn’t give much milk. We all wanted to get out of Puerto Casado because it was a low place with unhealthy air and mosquitoes and many of our people kept dying there.

A narrow-gauge railway went inland from the port for 72 kilometres. From there only a dirt trail led the rest of the way to the land we had purchased. We got together and planned how we would haul our things, all working together with the oxen and carts we had purchased. The trip took from two to three weeks. Most of the oxen were wild and difficult to manage. Our young men had a lot of fun with them but I thought it looked dangerous the way they thrashed about with their big horns. All of us divided up into smaller groups and travelled in convoys of ox carts, sometimes two smaller families to one cart.

During this time we heard from Canada that Heinrich’s father had died, and several months later his mother.

The trail into the Chaco was marked out by the military and very rough. All our things had to be packed carefully so they wouldn’t fall off the carts. We had to take enough food along for two weeks, so we baked and roasted much Zwieback. What we didn’t roast soon became mouldy in the humid air.

We took along salted and smoked beef, potatoes and noodles. On 7 September Heinrich and the boys rolled up our tents and we slept with the Jacob Toews family that last night at the port.

On the morning of the eighth we woke early and got our ten children ready for the first leg of the journey. That was by train for 72 kilometres. At the end of the line we found our oldest son Bernhard (eighteen years old by now), as planned, with the oxen and wagons to take us the rest of the way. One of our oxen had wandered off and we could not find it, however, so we yoked up another young wild one. He looked skinny and weak, I thought.

On both sides of the wagon we had made benches for us to sit with the little ones. We spread a canvas over the wagon to keep out the sun and had our food in a chest in the back. David Fehrs’ David took some of our baggage on another wagon, and Isaac Fehrs’ Isaak also took a load for us. On that load we had two bags of flour and our twelve chickens. We did not have room for all of our stuff so we left several boxes sit at the end of the rail line, with some of the farm equipment, to be fetched at a later date.

Isaak Fehr Jr., who hauled the Toews family's freight, ready for a trip into the Chaco, 1927.

Several hours on the trail into the wilderness the young ox lay down and refused to get up again. He was too tired. So our Bernhard, who had made several trips into the Chaco for other families and knew the way, rode back the trail to look for a replacement. While he was gone we made a fire and I cooked butter soup that we ate with dried smoked beef. It tasted good. Then Jakob D. Harder came along with a wagon and one ox tied to the back. Our Bernhard also came. We left the tired ox lying on the road and hitched up the other one. Then we kept on driving further into the wilderness until it got dark.  

Bernhard knew the places where we could find water and grass that the oxen would eat, so he told us how far we should go to set up camp. When we got to that spot, several other families were already there. The boys unhitched the oxen and tethered them out to graze while my husband made the fire. We had tea, dried beef and bread with honey for our evening meal. Then Mariechen and Sara cleaned up the food while I washed the five little children’s faces and feet and dusted off their clothes. Father and the boys set up our tents and we made our beds. Then we all laid ourselves down to rest with God.

Our three boys slept on the wagon. The moonlight was clear and beautiful these nights, making our trip into the Chaco so much more pleasant. On the third day when we came to a military camp, Coronel Martinez, we found pasture and water again. Bernhard thought our lost ox might be here so he rode out with his slingshot to find it. Sure enough, he came back after a while with the big blue roan. He looked good, but the boys said he was not as nice as he looked.

The next day we had nice travelling. The sun shone, we had no wind or rain. But after several hours the big roan ox refused to go further. We had to hitch up the borrowed ox again until we got to our next camp at Laguna Casado.

The next day we met some of our people travelling east to the rail-head to pick up more of their belongings. They came from the camp at Pozo Azul and told us that the day before they had buried Heinrich Friesen’s wife, and also her nineteen-year-old daughter Greta, at that place. The entire Friesen family and many others at Pozo Azul lay sick with the typhus.

We got to Pozo Azul that night. Heinrich’s brother Abram Toews and their family were already there. My husband went yet to visit those who were sick. Heinrich Friesens’ four-year-old, Lena, died that night. Also Peter Friesens’ Gerhard, 21 years old, and preacher Jakob Friesen. Many others of our people are buried there at Pozo Azul.

Funeral procession at Pozo Azul. "As soon as the hymns of one funeral ended, another one began. As soon as we dried our tears from one loss, we began to shed more for another one," wrote Martin C. Friesen, one of the early immigrant leaders.

The next morning we left early and were able to get to Hoffnungsfeld (Campo Esperanza) by evening. My husband and my son went into the camp to look for water and bread. They said water was very scarce but they brought some. Johann Fehrs, who were staying at Hoffnungsfeld, came to see us that night and wanted us to stay with them but we decided to keep on going. Johann told us they were digging a well and were just getting some water. Later that well became a refreshing stop for many of our people travelling out to the rail-head, and we came to know it as Jakob’s Well.

From Hoffnungsfeld we kept going to Palo Blanco where many of our people from Saskatchewan had set up camp. We let our oxen graze here and prepared our noon meal. The water here was good, but the people also lay sick with the typhus. Both  elders from Saskatchewan, Aron Zacharias and Abram Bergen, turned sick and died here. My husband went to visit the sick people yet.

After the noon meal we set out again and by evening the fifteenth of September we saw the first light of the camp at Loma Plata where we planned to stay. That was from preacher Johann Sawatzky’s tent that he had set up with his children. His wife had died. We parked our wagons there on the trail and I got my yeast ready to bake bread the next day. We were all tired and as soon as we had eaten and set up our beds we laid ourselves down to rest with God.

The next morning when the sun came up my husband and the boys went to look for a place where we could live until our village got measured out. On the northwest side of the clearing we set up our tents on the edge of the jungle, in the shade of some large algarrobo trees. The shade was very nice. Only five families lived on this side of the lagoon yet and Johann Brauns lived on the other side. My husband went over to see if they had made an oven we could use to bake bread. They had already been here two weeks. So Mariechen and I took our dough over and baked it.

The Johann Braun family in front of their tent at the Loma Plata camp.

The next day our son Bernhard and the two Fehr boys, David and Isaak, wanted to head back to the rail-head to fetch the rest of our stuff. So we had to bake enough that they would have Zwieback for the long journey there and back. We also had to make noodles and dry them right away. By evening of that day my husband and the boys had cleared out the brush and set up our tents. Then we had all our things under a roof again. Once again we were tired but we laid ourselves to rest, in the knowledge that God would protect us (wir könnten uns wieder müde, und mit einem Gottvertrauen zur Ruhe legen.)

We were in our new colony now and all of us slept well. The big boys left early the next morning. Father and Herman got to work making mud bricks out of which we could build an oven and a stove. They also built a kitchen for us womenfolk. They chopped off young trees and peeled them for posts. We had brought some sheets of corrugated iron along so they used that for a roof. The walls they made of burlap bags to protect us from the wind and rain while we cooked the food.

On the 28th of September we had our first lovely rain so we set about planting a garden right away. Our neighbours were the Jakob Zacharias and Johann Sudermann families and old David Peters. All together we cleaned up a piece of camp land (campo, a patch of natural grassland in the jungle) and got it ready to plough. We built a fence around it too. During the first days of October it rained again and on the fifth of this month, my husband’s first birthday in Paraguay, we made our garden. We planted corn, beans, cucumbers, melons and watermelons, pumpkins, peanuts and four kinds of Kaffir corn. We had brought our seeds with us from North America and it rained just at the right times. We had good soil at Loma Plata and all the vegetables did wonderfully.

After we finished planting our garden we decided to build a temporary two-room house in which we could live while we waited on our land to get measured. It had gotten hot and with the rains came large clouds of insects. We also dug a well with our neighbours and had much good water.

At the beginning of October our children began to make mud bricks for the temporary house. My husband and the boys cut down trees that Abram Giesbrecht sawed into timber for its doors and window frames. Our son Bernhard laid the bricks and Herman (fourteen years old) mixed the mud to use as mortar. Mariechen dipped the bricks into water and handed them to the boys. It did not take long and they had our house finished. For its roof we used the ten-foot sheets of corrugated iron we brought along. We plastered the walls inside and out with clay.

By November a large number of Mennonite families had settled in Loma Plata. Our biggest tent served as the post office. We also had some Rawleighs medicines on hand for whoever needed them. But food was getting scarce so the men travelled to Asunción to buy more. That was in December. Our boys went out with the oxen and wagon to get the freight from the rail-head. My husband was along to Asunción and came back with sugar, lard, rice, beans, syrup, honey, coffee, yerba mate, galletas, some dried fruit and corned beef. But it only took a short while and everything got scarce again. We had lived two and a half months by now with no milk or dairy products.

Some of us got a few cows from Puerto Casado, but the one we got was young and did not give enough milk for our large family. The children were very happy for the little bit we had and it helped a lot with the cooking. Many people were sick in Loma Plata by now and the scarcity of food made their recovery more difficult. For the first months, until our gardens began to produce, we had no greens or vegetables. We only had meat once in a while and we lived mainly from the flour sack. We could find no fruit in the Chaco except cactus berries. We ate many of these and also cooked Moos with them. 

Every day we went to look at our garden. It was such a wonder and joy to see how it grew. When my husband came back from his five-week trip to Asunción to buy food he could hardly believe what he saw when he came back, thanks to the grace of God. “An Gottes Segen ist alles glegen" (Everything depends on the blessing of God.)

By Christmas we had our first ripe melons, watermelons and cucumbers. That brought us so much joy. Many others that had no gardens yet came to Loma Plata and enjoyed them with us. The watermelons in particular were so much larger and sweeter than any we had raised in Canada. We saved all the seeds and gave them to many people.

By January, 1928, we were pulling out peanuts, and by February the Kaffir corn was ripe. The stems of one kind of Kaffir corn were sweet and we pressed them out to make syrup. We had never seen this crop before and we were amazed by its beauty. All this food awoke in us much courage and hope for the future. We gave much seed away and were just sorry we had not planted more.

We needed milk for the sick people and children, however, so we held a meeting and decided to send more brothers to Puerto Casado and beyond to look for milk cows.

On the evening before Christmas, around Vesper time, Tante Gerhard Doerksche came to our place with a basket full of cookies she had baked. She had even managed to make a bit of red sugar to sprinkle on them. That brought our little ones much happiness. The children said their Wünschen (hymns memorised during the Advent season) for her, and she went on to other people’s houses, bringing joy wherever she went.

The weather, at Christmas, was so different for us. Everything standing in the loveliest green, everything growing, and so warm. We had a wonderful and joyous time, singing many songs, that for those of us who trust in Jesus fill us with praise that is ever new.

My husband and sons were gone five weeks to get more cows. They bought them a distance down the Paraguay River and shipped them to Puerto Casado, then brought them the remaining 200 km through the jungle on foot. When they came back we corralled them up at Loma Plata and the families came in the afternoon to get them. Some of the cows had gotten lost along the way but turned up later. Now we had three cows with calves, one heifer and four oxen.

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Peter
 
Rocky Cape Christian Community
19509 Bass Highway
Detention River, Tasmania 7321
Australia
www.thecommonlife.com.au