Evening Republican, Volume 14, Number 104, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 2 May 1910 — LAST OF THE “WENDS.” [ARTICLE]

LAST OF THE “WENDS.”

(Iveer Settlement of SUti Who Toole Refuse la the Forest*. By devious ways and by dint of much study of Bradshaw, one may arrive from Berlin in as little as two hours in the middle of the ninth century, A. D. # and in the country of'the last of the Wends, the Detroit NewsTribune says. For in the Spreewald, that queer country of dense forest. Intersected by many streams and passable only in boats, live the last remnant of the unwarlike Slavs, whom the Huns and Avars drove before them from their quiet pasture lands beyond the Vistula The Germans, Christian and nonChristian, but especially the Teutschritters, drove back the Slavs by little and little, until to-day eastward of the Polish frontier there are left only a few of the marsh settlements, in which centuries ago the Slav people took refuge. The largest and most picturesque of these is the Spreewald. “Wends,” the Germans called their Slav neighbors, and probably meant thereby either the “shepherd folk” or the “Nomads.” To-day they are of interest because of their extremely picturesque costumes and because, like the Burgundians of France, all of tho women are born nurses. The very sign of plutocratic supremacy in a Berlin family is the engagement of a “Spreewalderin” as a nurse. It is a sign, too, that the family inhabits no exiguous rooms, for the Spreewalderin requires much space for her petticoats. For the status of a Spreewald woman In her own village (different villages have different costumes) is known by the number of the wide, stiff petticoats which she possesses. At the bottom they stand »ut like crinolines, being starched as stiff as a board. All the costumes are made by specialists in the villages, but the petticoats cost less than the queer squaretopped caps. These caps, often of finest hand embroidery, have to be readjusted almost every time they afe put on, the groundwork being buckram stiffened and shaped on a special form. There are special “cap women” in the villages, who are experts in shaping the caps, and for whose services there is a great demand on Saturday nights. The*material for the petticoats and also the cap embroidery is neatly always made by the young Spreewald girls themselves. They always belong to village spinning circles, where the flax is spun and prepared, and it is by oral tradition in these circles that the Wends, retain their ancient usages. In general, the truest tradition and the most accurate costumes are to be found in little island villages (usually not more than two or three block houses) on the side streams. The central point for visitors, Burg, though it displays most splendor of costume, is more or less a fake, for the race and the tradition of the Wends of Burg have been adulterated by admixture with the soldiers whom Frederic William IV. settled in the district to help “Germanize” the people. Although the Wends were long a heathen folk, and although the customs connected with sun worship are still traceable, the Wendish women to-day are the most devout of churchgoers. Not even a cap may be adjusted or "smoking flax quenched” during morning service on Sunday, and the old women declare that if a man be caught at work in the field on Sunday Pschipolnitza will come with her sickle and strike him dead.