The Prairieleut, also written Prärieleut and sometimes also called Prairie People, were a branch of the

Hutterite Hutterites (german: link=no, Hutterer), also called Hutterian Brethren (German: ), are a communal ethnoreligious branch of Anabaptists, who, like the Amish and Mennonites, trace their roots to the Radical Reformation of the early 16th century ...

tradition from the immigration of the Hutterites to the United States in the 1870s until the about the middle of the 20th century, when they had almost totally assimilated into

Mennonite Mennonites are groups of Anabaptist Christian church communities of denominations. The name is derived from the founder of the movement, Menno Simons (1496–1561) of Friesland. Through his writings about Reformed Christianity during the Radi ...

congregations, especially into the Krimmer Mennonite Brethren or into mainstream society. The Prairieleut did not live in colonies, with community of goods, but on individual farms, mostly homesteads on

South Dakota South Dakota (; Sioux: , ) is a U.S. state in the North Central region of the United States. It is also part of the Great Plains. South Dakota is named after the Lakota and Dakota Sioux Native American tribes, who comprise a large porti ...

grasslands. During the 20th century the Prairieleut mostly lost their distinctive language Hutterisch. According to the United States Census in 1880 there were 822 Prairieleut.

References

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Literature

*Rod A. Janzen: ''The Prairie People: Forgotten Anabaptists'', Hanover, NH, 1999. *Rod A. Janzen: ''Paul Tschetter: The Story of a Hutterite Immigrant Leader, Pioneer, and Pastor'', Eugene, OR, 2009. * John A. Hostetler: ''Hutterite Society'', Baltimore, MD, 1974. Hutterites in the United States German-American culture in South Dakota Anabaptist denominations Protestantism in South Dakota