The area that is now known as Mitchell were originally lands of the nomadic
Ojibway-speaking
Anishinabe people. On 3 August 1871 the Anishinabe people signed
Treaty 1 and moved onto reserves such as the
Brokenhead Indian Reserve and
Roseau River Anishinabe First Nation Reserve. The area was then settled by
Russian Mennonite settlers in the 1874. At that time there were dozens of villages in the
East Reserve. Three of them, Vollwerk, Ebenfeld, and Reichenbach, were eventually absorbed into the new community of Mitchell, which was renamed after the surrounding school district established in 1919. The Canadian government deliberately chose English names for the school districts, such as Mitchell,
Bothwell,
Randolph and others in an attempt to
assimilate the Mennonites into Canadian culture and eventually some of these communities, such as Mitchell, abandoned the original German names and adopted the new English names as their community names. Vollwerk (which later became Mitchell) was the home of obserschulz (
reeve) Jacob Peters, who led the Mennonite delegation to Canada and was a signatory of the
Privilegium. A cairn and gravestone honouring him can be found at the historic Vollwerk Cemetery on Reichenbach Road in Mitchell. The Stahn family, who sold much of the land that would eventually become the modern day community of Mitchell, are also honoured at the Vollwerk Cemetery. ==Education==