Rural communities depend on the health of the agrarian cultures that compose them. These cultures grow out of the symbiotic relationship between a particular landscape and the human community that lives on and uses the land. Agrarian cultures had their origin in the development of agriculture and gave birth to the civilizations and empires of history. Based on the exercise of hierarchical power characteristic of their nature, empires and civilizations are always a threat to the welfare of their agrarian cultures, that by nature tend to be local, relational, reciprocal, and ecological. This is the story of the three Anabaptist agrarian cultures—Swiss German, Low German, and Hutterian—of the Freeman, South Dakota, rural community, and their sojourn within the empires of civilization through the centuries. More specifically, this is the story of their birth, growth, maturation, and death (or rebirth?) in the particular landscape of the Great Plains to which they came from Russia in the 1870s. Here we see the agrarian cultures’ struggle to adapt to the new environment of the Great Plains and to maintain their unique identity while living within American society. This is the drama of a rural community’s life cycle!

Paul Tschetter Was a Leading Figure In Late Nineteenth-Century Hutterite history, the "Hutterite Joshua," who convinced 1,250 Hutterites to leave Russia in the 1870s and resettle in Dakota Territory. Tschetter's life elucidates the way that an immigrant community fought for survival in a North American environment that stressed assimilation to radically different political, economic, cultural, and religious values. Janzen provides an in-depth narrative and analysis of Tschetter's influence based on diaries, sermons, hymns, interviews, and other primary materials. "I welcome this long-overdue book on Paul Tschetter. Rod Janzen is to be commended for continuing to preserve the Prairieleut heritage. Paul Tschetter provided much needed leadership in a very transitional period of Hutterian history."---Tony Waldner, Forest River Hutterite Colony "Much has been written on the communal Hutterites, but Rod Janzen is one of the very few scholars who have tracked the history of the more numerous Prairieleut, or noncommunal Hutterites. Spotlighting the pivotal Prairieleut leader Paul Tschetter is a giant step forward in preserving the history of the `other' Hutterites."---Timothy Miller, University of Kansas "Janzen writes the way history ought to be written ... The author builds upon, and then goes far beyond all previous studies---in content, and especially in his solid interpretation and historical analysis where socioreligious perspectives are not shortchanged."---Leonard Gross, author of the Golden Years of the Hutterites "The Tschetter family is grateful for Dr. Janzen's thoughtful biography."---Wesley G. Tschetter, South Dakota State University "Paul Tschetter's biography---so well-written by the careful and detailed research of Rod Janzen---preserves as a lasting tribute the story of a wonderful and many-sided man and the remarkable community of the Prairieleut people in the context of a forever vanished society and era."---Max Stanton, Brigham Young University, Hawaii