CONTENTS A POLISH PIONEER'S STORY....Mrs. William F. Allen 373 THE YANKEE AND THE TEUTON IN WISCONSIN The Society as a body is not responsible for statements or opinions advanced in the following pages by contributors COPYRIGHT, 1922, BY THE STATE HISTORICAL SOCIETY OF WISCONSIN A POLISH PIONEER'S STORY MRS. WILLIAM F. ALLEN It was my good fortune in the later sixties to spend a few days in a Wisconsin log house among the hills a few miles from the village of Avoca. The house was in so lonely a spot that a yellow wolf had come within shooting distance of the door the night before we arrived. The country was both wild and beautiful. A clear stream ran through the valley, so cold that it served as an ice chest, and all the cream and milk was kept in the "spring house." But though the surroundings were charming and the primitive manner of life most interesting to one who had lately come from conservative New England, the family was even more so. And it was by the light of the blazing logs on their hearth in those evenings, that the farmer, Dziewanowski (usually pronounced Dev-a-nos'-ki), gave me this account of his early life in Poland, and of the wanderings that had brought him to Wisconsin in pioneer days. I wish he might have lived to rejoice in the present wonderful rise of Poland since the World War, and in its hope for the future, aided by its many friends-notably the American and English Quakers. Poland lies like a great prairie, unprotected, save for a short distance on the south by the low range of the Carpathian Mountains. Thus it seemed an easy prize to Austria, Prussia, and Russia, the strong countries that surrounded it. They looked with longing eyes on its fertile grain fields, its rich mines, and its fine harbor of Danzig. They saw in the brave Polish youth good material for their armies. So they divided it among themselves, stole its wealth, took away its freedom, and even tried to prevent the people from speaking their own language. Of course the Poles resisted these robbers, long and des |