The lynching by male relatives in the Molotschna Colony was an act of vigilante violence that turned the accused men’s confinement into an immediate danger. The killing took place in a colony that policed itself, and it helped prompt Peters and the elders to summon outside police to arrest the men and take them to the city.

A Self-Policed Colony in Crisis

Molotschna was self-policed. Peters initially planned to confine the accused men in a shed for several decades, but their lives soon appeared to be at risk. Salome Friesen had already attacked one of the men with a scythe; the lynching was a further escalation, carried out not by officials but by male relatives of the victims.

The Hanging

A group of drunk and angry colonists hanged one man from a tree branch by his hands. The men then passed out in the sorghum field beside the tree, leaving him there, apparently forgotten. He died. The account’s stark sequence links the killing not to a formal sentence but to an act of reprisal followed by the assailants’ incapacitation.

The Response and Its Consequences

After the hanging, Peters and the elders decided to call in the police. The account presents the arrests and transfer to the city as presumably intended to protect the accused men from further violence. The episode thus marks a reversal in the authorities’ approach: the proposed long confinement in a shed gave way to removal from the colony, after self-policing had failed to keep the men safe.