Russian-occupied Ukraine became dissatisfied with increasing Russification and the removal of their military exemption and were persuaded by Hespeler to investigate Manitoba as a possibility for relocation. These Mennonite communities were not ethnically Russian, but had Dutch ancestry dating back to 16th century Friesland and Flanders, after which time they lived in Prussia for two centuries and then the Russian Empire where they became known as Russian Mennonites, a misnomer given that they were ethnically Dutch. In 1873, the Mennonites sent delegates to North America to investigate and negotiate terms of immigration. After touring a number of locations in North America, many of the delegates decided to move their people to Kansas, however, the more conservative groups were persuaded to settle in the new Canadian province of Manitoba, because the Canadian government was more generous in their guarantees of religious freedom. In 1873, a Privilegium was signed between the Mennonite delegates and the Canadian government, and a year later Mennonites started to arrive in the region. The document guaranteed, among other things, military exemption, freedom of religion, private schools, and land, known as the East Reserve. In the year following the signing of the Privilegium, Mennonites from the Bergthaler and Kleine Gemeinde groups immigrated to Manitoba, aided by Ontario Mennonite Jacob Yost Shantz, and founded dozens of villages in the East Reserve. Early history (1874–1909) Steinbach's original 18 Mennonite settler families were almost entirely of the new Kleine Gemeinde sect of Mennonites, a small conservative minority known for being gifted farmers. They left the Borosenko colony (a newly-formed offshoot of the larger Molotschna (or Milk River) colony) in south Russia (now Ukraine) and arrived in Canada late in the summer of 1874. Aided by their Métis neighbours, the families disembarked on the far west side of the reserve at the forks of the Rat and Red Rivers, near present day Niverville. As they moved east across the reserve, they found that much of the better land in the reserve had already been settled a few months earlier by the Bergthaler and earlier Kleine Gemeinde families. The earlier settlers had come to realize the area suffered from excessive moisture and settled upon much of the higher lands and gravel ridges. Steinbach's settlers chose the best land that was available to them, which was in the very northeast corner of the East Reserve. The 20 homesteads were laid out on the northeast