In the Enderlin Museum a few days ago I noticed an old handbill on display, dating from 1897, and addressed “To Cattle Owners”:
The undersigned hereby wishes to announce that he is again ready to receive orders for herding cattle during the coming season, from May 1st to October 1st, 1897. Good and sufficient drinking water can be found on the land. All cattle entrusted to my care will receive the best attention. All cattle must be branded. Price of herding $1.50 per head.
Signed, Chas. Erbstoesser, Watson Township, Section 3, Maple River. Herr Erbstoesser is offering to herd cattle for owners in Enderlin, although he lives on his farm just across the line over in southern Cass County.
This all lines up with situations across the northern plains I have described previously: how people in towns commonly supplied themselves with fresh milk and cream by keeping a cow or two; how they released their cows after morning milking to join a “town herd” under the care of a herdsman, who walked them out to pasture in the country; how the herdsman, known to the cows by his voice, easily gathered the beasts together in morning and brought them home for evening milking, simply walking them up the alley, from which they would turn of their own accord to return to their stalls.
This is well documented in newspaper notices, but the handbill in Enderlin is the first I have seen. It is the more interesting because below the English-language notice is a version in German; in fact, I think the English was translated from the German rather than vice versa. So Mr. Erbstoesser served both German- and English-speaking townsfolk.
Plus, I just like the way the German notice sounds! “Gutes gesundes Wasser und genügend Schattenbäume. . . . Jedes Stüd Vieh musst gebrennzeichnet sein.”
When I posted this to social media, right away I heard from Allyn Brosz, who grew up German-Russian in South Dakota, attained some impressive academic credentials, and now works for the Pentagon at a job I figure I shouldn’t ask too many questions about. He observes,
This was a strong tradition in many of the German colonies in Russia. They established a Hirtenkasse [herd fund] to which each colonist contributed according to the number of cattle that were taken out to pasture. The shepherds paid from this fund were usually Moldovans from the nearby villages.
Allyn’s people, as I recall, were Gluckstalers, which would have put them in western present Ukraine, neighboring the Moldvans.
So was our Mr. Erbstoesser a German from Russia, acquainted with the traditions in the Russian colonies? It turns out not. He was born in Saxony, Prussia, in 1833, emigrated to Wisconsin, and came to Dakota Territory before 1880. But it is possible he knew about herding traditions in Saxony. In fact, what this inquiry teaches me is that such cooperative practices probably prevailed around the world.
Witness this detail: I find a dispatch from a Peace Corps worker in present Moldova, who is delighted with her village neighbors’ folkways in regard to their milk cows — how they give them over to a herdsman each morning for grazing in the country, and he brings them back for milking at evening. It all seems so familiar — and winsome.
