time to come must be the same as that with which one regards a portrait
finished by a lightning crayon artist, “with frame complete,” in ten
minutes. We may have seen better portraits and more perfect coloring,
but we have never watched one completed, as it were, “while you wait.”
People long ago crowded to see Master Betty act, not because there were
no better actors in those days, but because he was so very young to do
it so very well. It was as a freak of nature, a Josef Hoffman of the
drama, that they considered him, and Oklahoma City must content itself
with being only of interest as yet as a freak of our civilization.
After it has decided which of the half-dozen claimants to each of its
town sites is the only one, and the others have stopped appealing to
higher and higher courts, and have left the law alone and have reduced
their attention strictly to business, and the city has been burned down
once or twice, and had its Treasurer default and its Mayor impeached,
and has been admitted to the National Baseball League, it may hope to
be regarded as a full-grown rival city; but at present, as far as it
concerns the far East, it is interesting chiefly as a city that grew
up overnight, and did in three years or less what other towns have
accomplished only after half a century.
[Illustration: OKLAHOMA CITY ON THE DAY OF THE OPENING]
The history of its pioneers and their invasion of their undiscovered
country not only shows how far the West is from the East, but how much
we have changed our ways of doing things from the days of the Pilgrim
Fathers to those of the modern pilgrims, the “boomers” and “sooners”
of the end of the century. We have seen pictures in our school-books,
and pictures which Mr. Boughton has made for us, of the _Mayflower’s_
people kneeling on the shore, the long, anxious voyage behind them, and
the “rock-bound coast” of their new home before them, with the Indians
looking on doubtfully from behind the pine-trees. It makes a very
interesting picture--those stern-faced pilgrims in their knickerbockers
and broad white collars; each man strong in the consciousness that
he has resisted persecution and overcome the perils of the sea, and
is ready to meet the perils of an unknown land. I should like you to
place in contrast with this the opening of Oklahoma Territory to the
new white settlers three years ago. These modern pilgrims stand in rows
twenty deep, separated from the promised land not by an ocean, but by a
line scratched in the earth with the point of a soldier’s bayonet. The
long row toeing this line are bending forward, panting with excitement,
and looking with greedy eyes towards the new Canaan, the women with
their dresses tucked up to their knees, the men stripped of coats and
waistcoats for the coming race. And then, a trumpet call, answered by
a thousand hungry yells from all along the line, and hundreds of men
and women on foot and on horseback break away across the prairie, the
stronger pushing down the weak, and those on horseback riding over
and in some cases killing those on foot, in a mad, unseemly race for
something which they are getting for nothing. These pilgrims do not
drop on one knee to give thanks decorously, as did Columbus according
to the twenty-dollar bills, but fall on both knees, and hammer stakes
into the ground and pull them up again, and drive them down somewhere
else, at a place which they hope will eventually become a corner lot
facing the post-office, and drag up the next man’s stake, and threaten
him with a Winchester because he is on _their_ land, which they have
owned for the last three minutes. And there are no Indians in this
scene. They have been paid one dollar and twenty-five cents an acre
for the land, which is worth five dollars an acre as it lies, before
a spade has been driven into it or a bit of timber cut, and they are
safely out of the way.
Oklahoma Territory, which lies in the most fertile part of the Indian
Territory, equally distant from Kansas and Texas, was thrown open to
white settlers at noon on the 22d of April, 1889. To appreciate the
Oklahoma City of this day, it is necessary to go back to the Oklahoma
of three years ago. The city at that time consisted of a railroad
station, a section-house and water-tank, the home of the railroad
agent, and four other small buildings. The rest was prairie-land, with
low curving hills covered with high grass and bunches of thick timber;
this as far as the eye could see, and nothing else. This land, which is
rich and black and soft, and looks like chocolate where the plough has
turned the sod, was thrown open by the proclamation of the President
to white settlers, who could on such a day, at such an hour, “enter
and occupy it” for homestead holdings. A homestead holding is one
hundred and sixty acres of land. The proclamation said nothing about
town sites, or of the division of town sites into “lots” for stores, or
of streets and cross-streets. But several bodies of men in different
parts of Kansas prepared plans long before the opening, for a town to
be laid out around the station, the water-tank, and the other buildings
where Oklahoma City now stands, and had their surveyors and their blue
prints hidden away in readiness for the 22d of April. All of those who
intended to enter this open-to-all-comers race for land knew that the
prairie around the station would be laid out into lots. Hence that
station and other stations which in time would become cities were the
goals for which over forty thousand people raced from the borders of
the new Territory. So many of these “beat the pistol” on the start and
reached the goal first that, in consequence, the efforts ever since to
run this race over again through the law courts has kept Oklahoma City
from growing with even more marvellous rapidity than it already has
done.
[Illustration: FIVE DAYS AFTER THE OPENING]
The Sunday before the 22d was a warm bright day, and promised well for
the morrow. Soldiers and deputy marshals were the only living beings in
sight around the station, and those who tried to descend from passing
trains were pushed back again at the point of the bayonet. The course
was being kept clear for the coming race. But freight cars loaded with
raw lumber and furniture and all manner of household goods, as well as
houses themselves, ready to be put together like the joints of a trout
rod, were allowed free entry, and stood for a mile along the side-track
awaiting their owners, who were hugging the border lines from fifteen
to thirty miles away. Captain D. F. Stiles, of the Tenth Infantry, who
had been made provost marshal of the new Territory, and whose soldiers
guarded the land before and maintained peace after the invasion, raised
his telescope at two minutes to twelve on the eventful 22d of April,
and saw nothing from the station to the horizon but an empty green
prairie of high waving grass. It would take the first horse (so he and
General Merritt and his staff in their private car on the side-track
decided) at least one hour and a quarter to cover the fifteen miles
from the nearest border. They accordingly expected to catch the
first glimpse of the leaders in the race with their glasses in about
half an hour. The signal on the border was a trumpet call given by a
cavalryman on a white horse, which he rode in a circle in order that
those who were too far away to hear the trumpet might see that it had
been sounded. A like signal was given at the station; but before it
had died away, and _not_ half an hour later, five hundred men sprang
from the long grass, dropped from the branches of trees, crawled from
under freight cars and out of cañons and ditches, and the blank prairie
became alive with men running and racing about like a pack of beagles
that have suddenly lost a hot trail.
Fifteen minutes after twelve the men of the Seminole Land and Town
Company were dragging steel chains up the street on a run, the red and
white barber poles and the transits were in place all over the prairie,
and neat little rows of stakes stretched out in regular lines to mark
where they hoped the town might be. At twenty minutes after twelve
over forty tents were in position, and the land around them marked
out by wooden pegs. This was the work of the “sooners,” as those men
were called who came into the Territory too soon, not for their own
interests, but for the interests of other people. At a quarter past one
the Rev. James Murray and a Mr. Kincaid, who represented the Oklahoma
Colony, stopped a sweating horse and creaking buggy and hammered in
their first stakes. They had left the border line exactly at noon, and
had made the fifteen miles at the rate of five minutes per mile. Four
minutes later J. H. McCortney and Colonel Harrison, of Kansas, arrived
from the Canadian River, having whipped their horses for fifteen miles,
and the mud from the river was over the hubs of the wheels. The first
train from the south reached the station at five minutes past two, and
unloaded twenty-five hundred people. They scattered like a stampeded
herd over the prairie, driving in their little stakes, and changing
their minds about it and driving them in again at some other point.
There were already, even at this early period of the city’s history,
over three different men on each lot of ground, each sitting by the
stake bearing his name, and each calling the other a “sooner,” and
therefore one ineligible to hold land, and many other names of more
ancient usage.
[Illustration: FOUR WEEKS AFTER THE OPENING]
But there was no blood shed even during the greatest excitement of that
feverish afternoon. This was in great part due to the fact that the
provost marshal confiscated all the arms he saw. At three o’clock the
train from the north arrived with hundreds more hanging from the steps
and crowding the aisles. The sight of so many others who had beaten
them in the race seemed to drive these late-comers almost frantic,
and they fell over one another in their haste, and their race for the
choicest lots was like a run on a bank when no one knows exactly where
the bank is. One young woman was in such haste to alight that she
crawled out of the car window, and as soon as she reached the solid
earth beneath, drove in her stake and claimed all the land around it.
This was part of the military reservation, and the soldiers explained
this to her, or tried to, but she was suspicious of every one, and
remained seated by her wooden peg until nightfall. She could just as
profitably have driven it into the centre of Union Square. Another
woman stuck up a sign bearing the words, “A Soldier’s Widow’s Land,”
and was quite confident that the chivalry of the crowd would respect
that title. Captain Stiles told her that he thought it would not, and
showed her a lot of ground still unclaimed that she could have, but
she refused to move. The lot he showed her is now on the main street,
in the centre of the town, and the lot she was finally forced to take
is three miles out of the city in the prairie. Another woman drove her
stake between the railroad ties, and said it would take a locomotive
and a train of cars to move _her_. One man put his stake in the very
centre of the lot sites laid out by the surveyors, and claimed the
one hundred and sixty acres around for his homestead holding. They
explained to him that he could only have as much land as would make
a lot in the town site, and that if he wanted one hundred and sixty
acres, must locate it outside of the city limits. He replied that the
proclamation said nothing about town sites.
“But, of course,” he went on, “if you people want to build a city
around my farm, I have no objections. I don’t care for city life
myself, and I am going to turn this into a vegetable garden. Maybe,
though, if you want it very bad, I _might_ sell it.”
He and the city fought it out for months, and, for all I know, are
at it still. At three o’clock, just three hours after the Territory
was invaded, the Oklahoma Colony declared the polls open, and voting
began for Mayor and City Clerk. About four hundred people voted. Other
land companies at once held public meetings and protested against this
election. Each land company was mapping out and surveying the city to
suit its own interests, and every man and woman was more or less of
a land company to himself or herself, and the lines and boundaries
and streets were intersecting and crossing like the lines of a dress
pattern. Night came on and put a temporary hush to this bedlam, and
six thousand people went to sleep in the open air, the greater part of
them without shelter. There was but one well in the city, and word was
brought to Captain Stiles about noon of the next day that the water
from this was being sold by a speculative gentleman at five cents per
pint, and that those who had no money were suffering. Captain Stiles
found the well guarded by a faro-dealer with a revolver. He had a tin
basin between his knees filled with nickels. He argued that he owned
the lot on which the water stood, and had as much private right to the
well as to a shaft that led down to a silver or an iron mine. Captain
Stiles threw him and his basin out at some distance on to the prairie,
and detailed a corporal’s guard to see that every one should get as
much water as he wanted.
[Illustration: CAPTAIN D. F. STILES]
During the morning there was an attempt made to induce the surveyors of
the different land companies to combine and readjust their different
plans, but without success. Finally, at three o clock, the people came
together in desperation to decide what was to be done, and, after an
amusing and exciting mass-meeting, fourteen unhappy and prominent
citizens were selected to agree upon an entirely new site. The choosing
of this luckless fourteen was accomplished by general nomination,
each nominee having first to stand upon a box that he might be seen
and considered by the crowd. They had to submit to such embarrassing
queries as, “Where are you from, and why did you have to leave?” “Where
did you get that hat?” “What is your excuse for living?” “Do you live
with your folks, or does your wife support you?” “What was your other
name before you came here?” The work of this committee began on the
morrow, and as they slowly proceeded along the new boundary lines
which they had mapped out, they were followed by all of those of the
population, which now amounted to ten thousand souls, who thought it
safe to leave their claims. As a rule, they found three men on each
lot, and it was their pleasant duty to decide to which of these the
lot belonged. They did this on the evidence of those who had lots near
by. In many cases, each member of each family had selected a lot for
himself, and this complicated matters still farther. The crowd at last
became so importunate and noisy that the committee asked for a military
guard, which was given them, and the crowd after that was at least
kept off the lot they were considering. The committee met with no real
opposition until it reached Main Street on Saturday, the fifth day of
the city’s life, where those who had settled along the lines laid down
by the Seminole Land Company pulled up the stakes of the citizens’
committee as soon as they were driven down. For a time it looked very
much as though the record of peace was about to be broken along with
other things, but a committee of five men from each side of the street
decided the matter at a meeting held that afternoon. At this same
public meeting articles of confederation were adopted, and a temporary
Mayor, Recorder, Police Judge, and other city officials were appointed,
who were to receive one dollar for their services. This meeting closed
with cheers and with the singing of the doxology.
The next day was Sunday, and was more or less observed. Captain Stiles
visited the gamblers, who swarmed about the place in great numbers, and
asked them to close their tables, which they did, although he had no
power to stop them if they had not wished to do so. In the afternoon
two separate religious services were held, to which the people were
called by a trumpeter from the infantry camp.
This is, in brief, the history of the first week of this new city.
There were, considering the circumstances, but few disturbances, and
there was no drunkenness. This is disappointing, but true. Both came
later. But at the first no one cared to shoot the gentleman on the
other end of his lot, lest the man on the next lot might prove to be
a relative of his, and begin to shoot too. Later on, when everybody
became better acquainted, the shooting was more general. They could
not easily get anything to drink, as Captain Stiles seized all the
liquor, and when it came in vessels of unmanageable size that could
not be stored away, spilled it over the prairie. In two weeks over one
thousand buildings were enclosed, and there would have been more if
there had been more lumber.
It would be interesting to follow the course of this sky-rocket among
cities up to the present day, and tell how laws were evolved and courts
established, and the complexities of the situation disentangled; but
that is work for one of the many bright young men who write monographs
on economic subjects at the Johns Hopkins University. It is just the
sort of work in which they delight, and which they do well, and they
will find many “oldest inhabitants” of this three-year-old city to take
equal delight in telling them of these early days, and in explaining
the rights and wrongs of their individual lawsuits against their city
and their neighbors.
[Illustration: POST-OFFICE, APRIL 22, 1889]
It is impossible, in considering the founding of Oklahoma, to overrate
the services of Captain Stiles. Seldom has the case of the right man
in the right place been so happily demonstrated. He was particularly
fitted to the work, although I doubt if the Government knew of it
before he was sent there, so apt is it to get the square peg in the
round hole, unless the square peg’s uncle is a Senator. But Captain
Stiles, when he was a lieutenant, had ruled at Waco, Texas, during the
reconstruction period, and the questions and difficulties that arose
after the war in that raw community fitted him to deal with similar
ones in the construction of Oklahoma. He was and is intensely unpopular
with the worst element in Oklahoma, and the better element call him
blessed, and have presented him with a three hundred dollar gold cane,
which is much too fine for him to carry except in clear weather. This
is the way public sentiment should be adjusted. Personal bravery had,
I think, as much to do with his success as the readiness with which
he met the difficulties he had to solve at a moment’s consideration.
Several times he walked up to the muzzles of revolvers with which
desperadoes covered him and wrenched them out of their owners’ hands.
He never interfered between the people and the civil law, and resisted
the temptation of misusing his authority in a situation where a weaker
man would have lost his head and abused his power. He was constantly
appealed to to settle disputes, and his invariable answer was, “I
am not here to decide which of you owns that lot, but to keep peace
between you until it is decided.” In September of 1889 a number of
disaffected citizens announced an election which was to overthrow
those then in power, and Captain Stiles was instructed by his superior
officers to prevent its taking place. This he did with a small force
of men in the face of threats from the most dangerous element in the
community of dynamite bombs and of a body of men armed with Winchesters
who were to shoot him first and his men later. But in spite of this
he visited and broke all the voting booths, wrested a Winchester from
the hands of the man who pointed it at his heart through one of the
windows of the polling-place, and finally charged the mob of five
hundred men with twenty-five soldiers and his fighting surgeon, young
Dr. Ives, and dispersed them utterly. I heard these stories of him on
every side, and I was rejoiced to think how well off our army must be
in majors, that the people at Washington can allow one who has served
through the war and on the border and in this unsettled Territory, and
whose hair has grown white in the service, to still wear two bars on
his shoulder-strap.
It is much more pleasant to write of these early days of Oklahoma
City than of the Oklahoma City of the present, although one of its
citizens would not find it so, for he regards his adopted home with
a fierce local pride and jealousy almost equal to a Chicagoan’s love
for Chicago, which is saying a very great deal. But to the transient
visitor Oklahoma City of to-day, after he has recovered from the shock
its extent and solidity give him, is dispiriting and unprofitable to
a degree. This may partly be accounted for by the circumstance that
his only means of entering it from the south by train is, or was at
the time I visited it, at four o’clock in the morning. No one, after
having been dragged out of his berth and dropped into a cold misty well
of darkness, punctured only by the light from the brakeman’s lantern
and a smoking omnibus lamp, is in a mood to grow enthusiastic over the
city about him. And the fact that the hotel is crowded, and that he
must sleep with the barkeeper, does not tend to raise his spirits. I
can heartily recommend this method of discouraging immigration to the
authorities of any already overcrowded city.
[Illustration: POST-OFFICE, JULY 4, 1890]
But as the sun comes up, one sees the remarkable growth of this
city--remarkable not only for its extent in so short a period, but
for the come-to-stay air about many of its buildings. There are stone
banks and stores, and an opera-house, and rows of brick buildings with
dwelling-rooms above, and in the part of the city where the people go
to sleep hundreds of wooden houses, fashioned after the architecture
of the sea-shore cottages of the Jersey coast; for the climate is mild
the best part of the year. There are also churches of stone and brick
and stained glass, and a flour-mill, and three or four newspapers,
and courts of law, and boards of trade. But with all of these things,
which show a steadily improving growth after the mushroom nature
of its birth, Oklahoma City cannot or has not yet shaken off the
attributes with which it was born, and which in a community founded by
law and purchase would not exist. For speculation in land, whether in
lots on the main street or in homestead holdings on the prairie, and
the excitement of real-estate transfers, and the battle for rights in
the courts, seem to be the prevailing and ruling passion of the place.
Gambling in real estate is as much in the air as is the spirit of the
Louisiana State Lottery in New Orleans. Every one in Oklahoma City
seems to live, in part at least, by transferring real estate to some
one else, and the lawyers and real-estate agents live by helping them
to do it. It reminded me of that happy island in the Pacific seas where
every one took in every one else’s washing. This may sound unfair,
but it is not in the least exaggerated. The town swarms with lawyers,
and is overrun with real-estate offices. The men you meet and the men
you pass in the street are not discussing the weather or the crops or
the news of the outside world, but you hear them say: “I’ll appeal
it, by God!” “I’ll spend every cent I’ve got, sir!” “They’re a lot
of ‘sooners,’ and I can prove it!” or, “Ted Hillman’s lot on Prairie
Avenue, that he sold for two hundred dollars, rose to three hundred in
one week, and Abner Brown says he won’t take six hundred for it now.”