Drunken Colonists Hang an Assailant

Drunken Colonists Hang an Assailant was an act of vigilante violence within the self-policed Molotschna Colony. Male relatives of the assaulted women hanged one of the accused attackers from a tree; his death helped turn the colony’s attempt to contain the case internally toward police intervention.

Setting and Breakdown of Order

Molotschna Colony was self-policed. Peters initially planned to confine the accused men in a shed for several decades, but their lives soon appeared to be in danger. Salome had already attacked one of the men with a scythe, and angry male relatives were taking punishment into their own hands. The hanging made plain that keeping the accused within the colony did not ensure their safety or restore order.

The Hanging

A group of drunk and angry male relatives of the victims hanged one man by his hands from a tree branch. They passed out in the sorghum field beside the tree, and the man died there, apparently forgotten. The account’s stark sequence—violence, intoxication, and a death left unattended—presents the killing not as an organized sentence but as a dangerous escalation amid collective anger.

Police Intervention

After the hanging, Peters and the elders decided to call in the police and have the accused men arrested and taken to the city, ostensibly for their own protection. The decision marked a shift from proposed long-term confinement in a shed to outside custody. The hanging thus forms a grim turning point: the colony’s effort to manage the crisis itself had become a further source of danger.