WESTERN SKIES - October 6, 2005

*** COTOPAXI JEWISH COLONY ***

ERIC WHITNEY: Earlier this week, Jews around the world observed the ancient traditions of Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year. It's a time of renewal and new beginnings.

In the spring of 1882, a new beginning was the dream of sixty-three Russian Jews who fled their homeland for Colorado, to escape religious persecution and starvation. Lured to the Wet Mountain Valley by a wealthy businessman's promise of farms, homes, and livestock, they arrived to find things were not what they expected.

In her recent book for adolescents, Nothing Here But Stones, author Nancy Oswald tells the story of these unusual pioneers. Oswald's novel was recognized as a Notable Book for a Global Society by the International Reading Association, and just received a 2005 Willa award for books about women in the West.

Shanna Lewis visited the author on her family's cattle ranch in Cotopaxi, where the ruins of the 1882 Jewish colony still exist.

SHANNA LEWIS: Nothing Here But Stones is the story of eleven year-old Emma, a Russian Jewish girl who comes to Colorado in 1882 with her widowed father, two sisters, and baby brother to start a new life. Like the actual colonists the book is modeled on, Emma's family and their fellow settlers arrive in Cotopaxi to find rocky dry land, no farming supplies, and crude unfinished cabins.

[sound of footsteps in dry grass and rocky soil]

LEWIS: We hike to the original site of the colony near the base of the imposing Sangre de Cristo Mountains. Softball-sized stones roll underfoot as we walk through dry weeds and grass to reach the site at an altitude of over eight thousand feet. Weathered lumber lies atop old stone foundations, remnants of the eight cabins that once stood here. Nearby, a large hole lined with rocks is all that's left of a root cellar. Oswald describes the houses the settlers found when they arrived.

NANCY OSWALD: There are a couple different accounts. One was that they were eight by twenty. Another account I read said they were really just single room shacks.

One of the other things that was interesting is when they first got here, of those twelve cabins that were prepared for them ahead of time, only four of them had stoves and none of the cabins had doors or windows. They had to start scrambling right from the very beginning.

LEWIS: Impoverished and ill-prepared, the colonists managed to survive two extremely difficult winters, but as their situation deteriorated, the men were forced to work in the mines or for the railroad, risking their lives each time they had to cross the Arkansas River.

OSWALD: Well, at the time also, there was no bridge across the river. I was told that the colonists actually helped to construct the first footbridge over the river. There are a couple of gruesome tales of people coming down at high water and trying to swim the river to get to the other side to get medicine, one man was trying to get medicine for his wife.

LEWIS: Marauding bears, poor harvests and myriad other troubles finally overwhelmed the pioneers. By 1884 all of the Jewish colonists had left for Denver or other areas where many of them eventually found success.

The reasons for the failure of the Cotopaxi colony are still in dispute. Most accounts lay some of the blame on Emmanuel Saltiel, the landowner who planned the colony and collected ten thousand dollars to supply dwellings and provisions to launch the settlement. Most historians believe he didn't live up to his end of the bargain, leaving the colonists in a precarious position. Miles Saltiel, a descendent of Emmanuel, argues that his ancestor acted in good faith, and that his actions were consistent with those of other businessmen of the era. He says the colonist's expectations were extravagant, and when they approached Emmanuel to ask for additional help, he merely shrugged. Oswald said that she's looked into this episode.

OSWALD: In one place they talked about one of the colonists talking to Saltiel on bended knee with tears in his eyes saying, "Please help us." And so I don't know if that's what Miles was referring to in his rebuttal, but I'm thinking, "Was that the shrug?" Because it just seems like that would be really hard to just shrug when somebody was in such great need and just passionately asking for help.

LEWIS: Along with the difficulties of scratching out a living on poor land with few resources, the Jewish pioneers were also challenged in practicing their religion and preserving their culture.

OSWALD: There were no other Jews here. Keeping kosher was really hard when you lived so far from any kind of established base; because of the dishes, the meat dishes and the milk dishes. If you're a pioneer you lack space, you lack the finances, so you lack a lot of those things which would help you carry on those traditions. Even wine for your Sabbath meal, and those kinds of things, the Jewish pioneers had to do without and it was such a big piece of their traditions.

LEWIS: Jewish culture also presented a challenge for Oswald. As an author, along with all her historical research she, as a non-Jew, had to learn about Jewish traditions. The Jewish angle makes her book stand out from other pioneer stories. Since the book came out, she has visited schools, libraries, and area Jewish groups to tell the story of the Cotopaxi colony.

OSWALD: One of the school visits I did in the spring, I found the kids were really interested in some of the Jewish memorabilia that I brought. A paper mache challah, and then challah covers and candlesticks and some of the things I took, the kids seemed to be really interested in it because they didn't know a lot about the Jewish culture and I did several sessions at that school and I would ask the kids, "Is anybody in here Jewish?" And I think out of that particular afternoon of visiting the school I had one student who was Jewish. And so I think maybe information about the Jewish culture is something that kids don't have a lot of exposure to, at least in our area here in Colorado. Maybe Denver or some of the other bigger areas, but in rural Colorado not a lot.

LEWIS: Jews were a minority in the old West and still are today. Robyn Canda is the great-great-granddaughter of Shulbaer Milstein, one of the original Cotopaxi colonists. Canda grew up on the Western Slope but, as an adult returned to live in the Wet Mountain Valley.

ROBYN CANDA: We were always the only Jewish family in the towns that I grew up in and there wasn't any synagogue or temple nearby. Although we would always go to Denver to family celebrations and bar mitzvahs. I didn't grow up having a place of worship.

LEWIS: Nothing Here But Stones tells the story of an unusual group of frontiersmen and it may also give many readers a chance to understand more about the Jewish people and the role they played in the settlement of the West.

For Western Skies, I'm Shanna Lewis in Cotopaxi.