"AND WHERE IS ORISTOWN?" THE TOWN ON THE MISSOURI
It came a few days later in a restaurant in Council Bluffs, Iowa, when I
heard the waiters, one white man and the other colored, saying, "I'm
going to Oristown." "And where is Oristown?" I inquired, taking a stool
and scrutinizing the bill of fare. "Oristown," the white man spoke up,
drawing away at a pipe which gave him the appearance of being anything
from a rover to a freight brakeman, "is about two hundred and fifty
miles northwest of here in southern South Dakota, on the edge of the
Little Crow Reservation, to be opened this summer." This is not the
right name, but the name of an Indian chief living near where this is
written.
Oristown is the present terminus of the C. & R.W. Ry. and he went on to
tell me that the land in part was valuable, while some portions were no
better than Western Nebraska. A part of the Reservation was to be opened
to settlement by lottery that summer and the registration was to take
place in July. It was now April. "And the registration is to come off at
Oristown?" I finished for him with a question. "Yes," he assented.
At Omaha the following day I chanced to meet two surveyors who had been
sent out to the reservation from Washington, D.C. and who told me to
write to the Department of the Interior for information regarding the
opening, the lay of the land, quality of the soil, rainfall, etc. I did
as they suggested and the pamphlets received stated that the land to be
opened was a deep black loam, with clay subsoil, and the rainfall in
this section averaged twenty-eight inches the last five years. I knew
that Iowa had about thirty inches and most of the time was too wet, so
concluded here at last was the place to go. This suited me better than
any of the states or projects I had previously looked into, besides, I
knew more about the mode of farming employed in that section of the
country, it being somewhat similar to that in Southern Illinois.
On the morning of July fifth, at U.P. Transfer, Iowa, I took a train
over the C.P. & St. L., which carried me to a certain town on the
Missouri in South Dakota. I did not go to Oristown to register as I had
intended but went to the town referred to, which had been designated as
a registration point also. I was told by people who were "hitting" in
the same direction and for the same purpose, that Oristown was crowded
and lawless, with no place to sleep, and was overrun with tin-horn
gamblers. It would be much better to go to the larger town on the
Missouri, where better hotel accommodation and other conveniences could
be had. So I bought a ticket to Johnstown, where I arrived late in the
afternoon of the same day. There was a large crowd, which soon found its
way to the main street, where numerous booths and offices were set up,
with a notary in each to accept applications for the drawing. This
consisted of taking oath that one was a citizen of the United States,
twenty-one years of age or over. The head of a family, a widow, or any
woman upon whom fell the support of a family, was also accepted. No
person, however, owning over one hundred and sixty acres of land, or who
had ever had a homestead before, could apply. The application was then
enclosed in an envelope and directed to the Superintendent of the
opening.
After all the applications had been taken, they were thoroughly mixed
and shuffled together. Then a blindfolded child was directed to draw one
from the pile, which became number one in the opening. The lucky person
whose oath was contained in such envelope was given the choice of all
the land thrown open for settlement. Then another envelope was drawn and
that person was given the second choice, and so on until they were all
drawn.
This system was an out and out lottery, but gave each and every
applicant an equal chance to draw a claim, but guaranteed none. Years
before, land openings were conducted in a different manner. The
applicants were held back of a line until a signal was given and then a
general rush was made for the locations and settlement rights on the
land. This worked fairly well at first but there grew to be more
applicants than land, and two or more persons often located on the same
piece of land and this brought about expensive litigation and annoying
disputes and sometimes even murder, over the settlement. This was
finally abolished in favor of the lottery system, which was at least
safer and more profitable to the railroads that were fortunate enough to
have a line to one or more of the registration points.
[Illustration: Became number one in the opening. (page 56.)]
At Johnstown, people from every part of the United States, of all ages
and descriptions, gathered in crowded masses, the greater part of them
being from Illinois, Iowa, Missouri, Minnesota, North Dakota, Kansas and
Nebraska. When I started for the registration I was under the impression
that only a few people would register, probably four or five thousand,
and as there were twenty-four hundred homesteads I had no other thought
than I would draw and later file on a quarter section. Imagine my
consternation when at the end of the first day the registration numbered
ten thousand. A colored farmer in Kansas had asked me to keep him posted
in regard to the opening. He also thought of coming up and registering
when he had completed his harvest. When the throngs of people began
pouring in from the three railroads into Johnstown (and there were two
other points of registration besides) I saw my chances of drawing a
claim dwindling, from one to two, to one to ten, fifteen and twenty and
maybe more. After three days in Johnstown I wrote my friend and told him
I believed there would be fully thirty thousand people apply for the
twenty-four hundred claims. The fifth day I wrote there would be fifty
thousand. After a week I wrote there would be seventy-five thousand
register, that it was useless to expect to draw and I was leaving for
Kansas to visit my parents. When the registration was over I read in a
Kansas City paper that one hundred and seven thousand persons had
registered, making the chance of drawing one to forty-four.
Received a card soon after from the Superintendent of the opening,
which read that my number was 6504, and as the number of claims was
approximately twenty-four hundred, my number was too high to be reached
before the land should all be taken. I think it was the same day I lost
fifty-five dollars out of my pocket. This, combined with my
disappointment in not drawing a piece of land, gave me a grouch and I
lit out for the Louisiana Purchase Exposition at St. Louis with the
intention of again getting into the P----n service for a time.
Ofttimes porters who had been discharged went to another city, changed
their names, furnished a different set of references and got back to
work for the same company. Now if they happened to be on a car that took
them into the district from which they were discharged, and before the
same officials, who of course recognized them, they were promptly
reported and again discharged. I pondered over the situation and came to
the conclusion that I would not attempt such deception, but avoid being
sent back to the Chicago Western District. I was at a greater
disadvantage than Johnson, Smith, Jackson, or a number of other common
names, by having the odd French name that had always to be spelled
slowly to a conductor, or any one else who had occasion to know me. Out
of curiosity I had once looked in a Chicago Directory. Of some two
million names there were just two others with the same name. But on the
other hand it was much easier to avoid the Chicago Western District, or
at least Mr. Miltzow's office and by keeping my own name, assume that I
had never been discharged, than it was to go into a half a dozen other
districts with a new name and avoid being recognized. Arriving at this
decision, I approached the St. Louis office, presented my references
which had been furnished by other M--pls business men, and was accepted.
After I had been sent out with a porter, who had been running three
months, to show me how to run a car, I was immediately put to work. I
learned in two trips, according to the report my tutor handed to the
chief clerk, and by chance fell into one of the best runs to New York on
one of the limited trains during the fair. There was not much knocking
down on this run, but the tips, including the salary were good for three
hundred dollars per month. I ran on this from September first to October
fourth and saved three hundred dollars. I had not given up getting a
Dakota Homestead, for while I was there during the summer I learned if I
did not draw a number I could buy a relinquishment.
This relates to the purchasing of a relinquishment:
An entryman has the right at any time to relinquish back to the United
States all his right, title, and interest to and in the land covered by
his filing. The land is then open to entry.
A claimholder who has filed on a quarter of land will have plenty of
opportunity to relinquish his claim, for a cash consideration, so that
another party may get a filing on it. This is called buying or selling a
relinquishment. The amount of the consideration varies with quality of
the land, and the eagerness of the buyer or seller, as the case may be.
Relinquishments are the largest stock in trade of all the real estate
dealers, in a new country. Besides, everybody from the bank president
down to the humble dish washer in the hotel, or the chore boy in the
livery, the ministers not omitted, would, with guarded secrecy, confide
in you of some choice relinquishment that could be had at a very low
figure compared with what it was really worth.