XXXI
THE LATEST FRONTIER--OKLAHOMA.
Collier, in his "Great Events of History," tells of a million warriors
who, leaving their wives and children, crossed the Danube, and swore
allegiance to Rome. Since that time a great many immigrations have
taken place, but none on so large a scale. But, large or small, the
settlements of the Indian Territory, now called Oklahoma, are the most
unique.
It would have been hard to have devised a worse way to open a new
country. Thousands of people--strong, weak, the poor settler, the
speculator, the gambler--were all here, man and wife, and spinster on
her own responsibility. All waited for weeks on the border-land. At
last the time came, and the gun was fired, and in confusion wild as a
Comanche raid, the great rush was made. Many sections being claimed
by two and three parties, the occasion had its comic side, amid more
that was tragic. Thousands went in on cattle-cars, and as many more
filled common coaches inside and out, and clung to the cow-catcher of
the engine. In places wire fences were on either side of the railway;
and men in trying to get through them in a hurry, often reached their
land minus a large part of their clothing.
[Illustration: LOOKING FOR A TOWN LOT.
_Page 294._]
In one case a portly woman, taking the tortoise plan of slow and
steady, reached the best section, while the men still hung in the
fence like victims of a butcher-bird. It is said of one young woman,
who made the run on horseback, that reaching a town-site, her horse
stumbled, and she was thrown violently to the ground and stunned. A
passing man jumped off his horse, and sprinkled her face with water
from his canteen; and as she revived, the first thing she said was,
"This is my lot."
"No, you don't," said the man. But to settle it they went to law, and
the court decided in favor of the woman, as she struck the ground
first.
Among much that was brutal and barbarous, some cases of chivalry were
noticed. In one case a young woman was caught in a wire fence, and two
young men went back, helped her out, and allowed her to take her
choice of a section. One man, in his eagerness, found himself many
miles from water. As he was driving his stake, he noticed that his
horse was dying; and realizing his awful situation, being nearly
exhausted with thirst, he cut his horses throat, drank the blood, and
saved his own life.
The work done in six years is simply marvellous. Imagine the prairie
described by Loomis as the place where you could see day after
to-morrow coming up over the horizon; at times covered with flowers
fair as the garden of the Lord, or covered with snow, and nothing to
break the fury of the wind. Seventy-five thousand Indians the only
permanent residents in the morning; at night hundreds of thousands of
whites--villages, towns, and cities started, in some of them a mayor
chosen, a board of aldermen elected, and the staked-out streets under
police control. The inhabitants were under tents for a few weeks,
while sickness of all kinds attacked them. There were rattlesnakes of
two varieties, tarantulas, two kinds of scorpions,--one, the most
dangerous, a kind of lizard, which also stings with its tail, and with
often deadly effect,--and centipedes that grow to six inches in
length. One of the latter was inside a shirt which came home from the
laundry, and planted his many feet on the breast of one of our
minute-men, and caused it to swell so fearfully that he thought at one
time he should die. He recovered, but still at times feels the effect
of the wounds, which are as numerous as the feet. The pain caused is
intense, and the parts wounded slough off.
[Illustration: FORMING IN LINE TO VOTE FOR MAYOR.
_Page 296._]
Now imagine all this; and then six years after you visit this land,
and find cities of ten thousand inhabitants, banks with polished
granite pillars,--polished with three per cent per month
interest,--great blocks, huge elevators, and fine hotels. And nowhere,
even in Paris, will you find more style than among the well-to-do. And
on the same streets where I saw all this, I also saw men picking
kernels of corn out of an old cellar close by a second-hand store,
where already the poor had given up and sold their furniture to get
home.
I looked out of my hotel window one morning in "Old Oklahoma," and saw
a lady walking past dressed in a lavender suit, a white hat with great
ostrich feathers on it, by her side a gentleman as well groomed as any
New York swell, an English greyhound ambled by their side, while in
the rear were rough men with the ugly stiff hats usually worn by your
frontier rough. Storekeepers were going to work in their
shirt-sleeves. This was in a town of two thousand inhabitants, where
there were four banks, four newspapers, eleven churches, and only
three saloons.
While I was there a most brutal murder took place,--a woman shot her
step-daughter, killing her instantly. The husband, the girl's father,
swept the blood from the sidewalk, and went down to the jail that
night and stayed with the woman, while a fiddler was sent down to
cheer her. This man was her fifth husband.
In the two weeks I was in that vicinity seven persons were killed.
Three men had shot down some train-robbers, and after they were dead
had filled their bodies with bullets. This so incensed the friends of
the dead men that a number of them went to the house where the men had
fortified themselves. When they saw how large a force was against
them, they surrendered, their wives in the meanwhile begging the men
who had come not to molest their husbands. But the women were pushed
rudely aside, and the men were carried to the hills and lynched.
One murderer cost the Territory over fifteen thousand dollars. Banks
have loaded pistols behind the wire windows, where they can be reached
at a moment's notice.
Still, lawlessness is not the rule; and it has never been as bad as
one city was farther north, where men were held up on the main street
in broad daylight. Such facts may just as well be known, because there
is a better time coming, and these things are but transitory.
In the old settled parts, peach orchards are already bearing; and if
there is a moderate rainfall, and the people can get three good crops
out of five, such is the richness of the soil, the people will be
rich. But to me the western part of the Territory seems like an
experiment as yet. There are many places in the same latitude farther
north utterly deserted; and empty court-houses, schools, and churches
stand on the dry prairie as lonesome as Persepolis without her
grandeur.
But now let us go into "The Strip." ("The Strip" is the Cherokee
Strip, the last but one opened; the Kickapoo being opened this May.)
It has been settled about eighteen months. It is May, 1895. We leave
the train, and start across the prairie in a buggy with splendid
horses that can be bought for less than forty dollars each. We pass
beautiful little ponies that you can buy for ten to twenty dollars. On
either side we pass large herds of cattle and many horses. Few houses
are in sight, as most of them are very small and hardly
distinguishable from the ground, while some are under ground. Here and
there a little log house, made from the "black jacks" that border the
stream, which is often a dry ditch. The rivers, with banks a quarter
of a mile apart at flood can be stepped over to-day.
Fifty miles of riding bring us to a county town. All the county towns
in "The Strip" were located by the Government, and have large squares,
or rather oblongs, in which the county buildings stand. It is the
day before the Indians are paid. Here we find every one busy. Streets
are being graded, and a fine court-house in process of erection.
Stores are doing an immense business, one reaching over one hundred
thousand dollars a year; another, larger still, being built. By their
sides will be a peanut-stand, a sod store, another partly of wood and
partly of canvas, and every conceivable kind of building for living in
or trading. And here is a house with every modern convenience, up to a
set of china for afternoon teas, and a club already formed for
progressive euchre.
[Illustration: INDIANS AT PAWNEE, OKLAHOMA TERRITORY.]
The Indian is not a terror to the settlers, as in early days; but he
exasperates him, stalking by to get his money from the Government. He
spends it like a child, on anything and everything to which he takes a
notion. He lives on canned goods, and feasts for a time, then fasts
until the Great Fathers send him more money. On the reservation,
gamblers fleece him; but he does not seem to care, for he has a
regular income and all the independence of a pauper.
It seemed very strange to look out of the car window, and see the
tepees of the Indians, and on the other side of the car a lady in
riding-habit with a gentleman escort--a pair who would have been in
their place in Rotten Row.
Now we must turn westward for a hundred miles, and in all the long
ride pass but one wheatfield that will pay for cutting; and that
depends on rain, and must be cut with a header. Dire distress already
stares the settler in the face; and even men, made desperate by hunger
in Old Oklahoma, are sending their petitions to Guthrie for food.
There are hundreds of families who have nothing but flour and milk,
and some who have neither. When a cry goes up for help, it is soon
followed by another, saying things are not so bad. This latter cry
comes from those who hold property, and who would rather the people
starve than that property should decrease.
I saw men who had cut wood, and hauled it sixteen miles, then split
it, and carried it twelve miles to market, and after their three days'
work the two men had a load for themselves and one dollar and a
quarter left. And one man said, "Mine is a case of 'root hog or die,'"
and so got fifty cents for his load of wood he had brought fourteen
miles; while another man returned with his, after vainly offering it
for forty cents. In one town I saw a horse,--a poor one, it is
true,--but the man could not get another bid after it had reached one
dollar and a half.
Of course there are thousands who are better off; but in the case of
very many they were at the very last degree of poverty when they went
in. Many of our minute-men preached the first Sunday. They were among
the men who sat on the cow-catcher of the engine, and made the run for
a church-lot and to win souls. They preached that first Sunday in a
dust-storm so bad that you could scarcely see the color of your
clothes. To those who never saw one, these dust-storms are past
belief. Even when the doors and windows are closed, the room seems as
if it were in a fog; for the fine particles of dust defy doors and
windows. And should a window be left open, you can literally use a
shovel to get the dust off the beds.
You may be riding along, as I was, the hot wind coming in puffs, the
swifts gliding over the prairie by your side, the heat rising visibly
on the horizon, when in a flash, a dust-storm from the north came
tearing along, until you could not see your pony's head at times,
drifts six inches deep on the wheat, and your teeth chattering with
the cold at one P.M., when at eleven A.M. you were nearly exhausted
with the heat.
Strange when you ask people whether it is not extremely hot in the
Middle West, they say, "Yes; but we always have cool nights." And, as
a rule, that is so; but now as I write, July 9, 1895, comes the news
of intense heat,--thermometer a hundred and nine in the shade, and
ninety-eight at midnight, followed by a storm that shot pebbles into
the very brickwork of the houses.
Every man who can, has a cyclone cellar. Some are fitted up so that
you could keep house in them. In one town where I went to speak, the
meeting was abandoned on account of a storm which was but moderate;
but such is the fear of the twister that nearly all the people were in
their pits.
In the Baptist church, where they had a full house the night before, I
found one woman and two men; and they were blowing out the lights. The
telegrams kept coming, telling of a storm shaking buildings, and
travelling forty miles an hour; but it was dissipated before it
reached me, and I escaped. Yet I found a man who had lived over a
quarter of a century in the West, and had never seen one.
It is a big country. A friend of mine in England wrote me that they
feared for me as they read of our fearful cyclones. I was living near
Boston, Mass. I wrote back, saying I felt bad for them in London when
the Danube overflowed. I had to go over and explain it before they saw
my joke.
[Illustration: AFTER A STORM, GUTHRIE, OKLAHOMA TERRITORY.
_Page 306._]
The cyclone, however, is no joke. Nevertheless, it performs some queer
antics. One cyclone struck a house, and left nothing but the floor and
a tin cuspidore. The latter stood by a stove which weighed several
hundredweight, and which was smashed to atoms.
In another house a heavy table was torn to pieces, while the
piano-cover in the same room was left on the piano. In one house all
had gone into the cellar, when they remembered the sleeping baby. A
young girl sprang in, and got the baby; and just as she stepped off,
the house went, and she floated into the cellar like a piece of
thistle-down. A school-teacher was leaving school, when she was thrown
to the ground, and every bit of clothing was stripped from her,
leaving her without a scratch.
[Illustration: FIRST CHURCH AND PARSONAGE, ALVA, OKLAHOMA TERRITORY.
_Page 307._]
Perhaps the most remarkable escape was a few years ago in Kansas City.
When a young school-teacher reached home, her mother said, "Why did
you not bring your young brother?" She hastened back; and as she
reached the room where her brother was, she grasped him around the
waist, and jumped out of the window just as the building was struck.
She was carried two blocks, and dropped without injury to either of
them. These things are hard to believe, but no one will be lost who
does not believe them.
But to return to our journey. We had three churches to dedicate in
three days, two on one day. And here let me say, a church could be
organized every day in the year, and not trespass on any one's work.
We could see the little building loom up on the horizon, appearing
twice its size, as things do on the prairie with nothing to contrast
them with, for the houses were almost invisible. The place was
crowded, so that the wagon-seats were brought in; and a very affecting
sight it was to see the communion-wine brought in a ketchup bottle.
The people were good, but very poor, although nearly all owned horses,
for in that country this is no sign of wealth.
After a few hours' drive, we came to our second church. The prairie
here was broken up by small cañons, interspersed with streams, and was
quite pretty. A grocery and a blacksmith-shop, the latter opened
Tuesday and Thursday only, comprised the village. A small house where
the proprietor of the store lived, and the church, were all the
buildings one could see. The people were very cordial and intelligent.
The daughters of mine host were smart, handsome girls, that could do
almost everything,--ride a wild broncho, and shoot a rattler's head
off with a bullet, and yet were modest, well-dressed, and
good-mannered young ladies.
I was taken down stairs cut out of the clay, and covered with carpet,
into a room the sides of which were the cañon. It looked out over the
great expanse. The beds were lifted up so as to form walls around
the room, and take up less space.
After a bountiful supper, I looked at the church, which stood on a
sightly hill. I wondered where the people were coming from, but was
told it would be filled. It was on a Thursday night. I looked over the
prairie; and in all directions I saw dark spots in motion, that grew
larger. I said, "They appear as if rising from the ground."
"Well," said mine host, "most of them are."
By eight o'clock three hundred were there, most of them bringing
chairs; by 8.30, there were four hundred; at 9 o'clock, by actual
count, five hundred people crowded in and around the door of the
church. It was a sight never to be forgotten, to see this great
company start off across the prairie in the full moonlight. I spoke to
some of them, saying, "Why, you were out at the afternoon
meeting."--"Yes," said the man, "I should have come if we had to ride
a cow all the way from Enid." This was a place thirty miles away.
This church was built by the people, one man working for a dollar a
week and his dinner, the farmers working his farm for him while he was
at the building.
* * * * *
[Illustration: AT A CHURCH DEDICATION.
_Page 310._]
The church had not yet received its chairs, and was seated with boards
laid across nail-kegs.
Here our minute-man preaches in houses so small that the chairs had to
be put outside, and the people packed so thickly that they touched
him. It ought to touch the Christian reader to help more. We had fifty
miles to ride the next day, into a county town. We found it all alive;
for nearly four hundred lawsuits were on the docket, mostly for timber
stealing.
"Poor fellows," I thought, "Uncle Sam ought to give you the timber for
coaxing you here."
However, the judge was a fine, well-read man, and let them off easy.
Deputy-sheriffs by the score were stalking about, with their deadly
revolvers sticking out from under their short coats.
The best hotel was crowded, and I had for that night to sleep in
another one. The house was old, and had been taken down and brought
here from Kansas and rebuilt. The doors up-stairs once had glass in
them; rough boards covered the broken places. One door was made up
entirely of old sign-boards, which made it appear like so many Chinese
characters, such as Pat said he could not read, but thought he could
play it if he had his flute with him.
I was ushered into a room, and requested to put the light out when I
was through with it; meaning I was to place it outside, which I did
not do. But what a room! The wainscoting did not reach the floor.
Small bottles of oil, with feathers in them, looked awfully
suspicious. There was no washstand or water. The pillow looked like a
little bag of shot, and was as dirty as the bed-clothes. The door was
fastened with a little wooden button, which hung precariously on a
small nail.
I took off my coat, and put it on again, and finally lay down on the
bed, after placing something between my head and that pillow.
I had to go several blocks in the morning to find a place to wash, so
dirty were the towels down-stairs. I was then given a house to myself,
which consisted of a single room, eight by ten, or ten by twelve, I
forget which. It was originally the church and parsonage. Here the
church was organized, and the first wedding took place.
A fine church, the largest and handsomest in the Territory, was next
door, and was to be dedicated the next day, which would be Sunday.
This building had been brought all the way from Kansas, and the very
foundation-stones carried with it, and put up in better shape than
ever. Three times next day it was crowded, even to the steps outside,
many coming twenty miles to attend. One lady came twice who lived six
miles away, and said, "Oh, how I wish I could come again to-night! But
I have six cows to milk, and it would mean twelve miles to ride there
and back, and then six miles to go home; yet I would if I could. Oh!
sometimes I think I should die but for God and my little girl."
As the people came in, I said to myself, "Where have I seen these
ladies before,--pink and lemon-colored silk dresses, pointed buff
shoes, ostrich feathers in their enormous hats,--oh! I have it, in the
daily hints from Paris."
The men wore collars as ugly and uncomfortable as they could be made,
which made them keep their chins up; and right by their sides were
women whose hats looked like those we see in boxes outside the stores,
your choice for five cents; there were four or five little sunburned
children, some of whom were in undress uniform, and their fathers in
homespun and blue jeans.
Close by in the cañons crouched a fugitive from justice. Two men
started out to take him, but came home without their guns. Then a
brave, cool-headed man of experience went, and slept in the timber
where our desperado lay concealed, thinking to catch him in the
morning before the robber awoke; but while he was rubbing his own
sleepy eyes the words, sharp as a rifle report, came, "Hold up your
hands!" And number three came home minus his shooting-irons.
Oklahoma differs in many ways from other frontiers. You find greater
extremes, but you also find a higher type intellectually. The
_Century_ and _Harper's_ and the popular magazines sell faster, and
more of them, than the _Police Gazette_.
On the other hand, settled _en masse_ as it has been, the church has
not begun to reach the people except in county towns, where, as usual,
it is too often, but not always, overdone. In one case I found a man
who was trying to organize with one member; and in another a man
actually built a church before a single member of his denomination
was there, and there were none there when I left. In some cases I
found our minute-man an old soldier; and more than once for weeks at a
time he had to sleep in his clothes, and keep his rifle by his side.
In some cases the Government had located a county town, and the
railway company had chosen another site close by. Then the fight
began. The railway at first ignored the Government's site, and ran
their trains by; built a station on their own site, and would have no
other. Then the people on the Government site tore up the tracks, and
incendiarism became so common that the insurance agent came and
cancelled all the policies except the church and parsonage where our
minute-man stood guard. This was done in several places, and the end
is not yet.
Now, to the general reader, everything seems in a hopeless muddle, and
he is glad he is not living there. But remember this. It is better
than some older settlements, where men had to give eighty bushels of
wheat for a pair of stogy boots, as they did in Ohio, and fight the
Indian as well as the wolf from the door, or in Kansas forty years
ago, where corn brought five cents a bushel, and men had to go a
hundred miles to the mill. In order to show the hopeful side, I will
give an illustration.
I was to speak at a meeting in Illinois. My way was through Missouri,
where spiritual and civilized prosperity has not kept pace with her
wealth and opportunities. I was entertained in a mansion built sixty
years ago. The city, of sixteen thousand inhabitants, could hardly be
matched in New England,--many fine streets, shaded with grand old
elms; the roads bricked and well graded; the houses beautiful,
artistic, and surrounded with lovely lawns; a college, a ladies'
seminary, and many fine schools and churches.
The lady of the house said, "My mother crossed the mountains many
times to Washington, to live with her husband, who represented the
State there." At last she had to take two carriages and two horses,
and it became too hard work, when her husband built the house which is
still a beautiful home, with magnificent elms, planted by its original
owner, shading it. In that day the rattlesnake glided about the
doorway, the Indians roamed everywhere, and the wolves actually licked
the frosting off the cakes that were set to cool on the doorstep,
while the Indians stole the poor woman's dinner who lived close by.
To-day a park adorns the front, given by the generous owner to the
city; and where the wolves and the Indians roamed, lives the daughter
of Governor Duncan, with her husband and family, in one of the finest
cities of its size in the world. Nowhere in all this wide world can
the advance of civilization during the last fifty years be found on so
large a scale as here on the American frontiers.
XXXII.
THE PIONEER WEDDING.
As one travels over our country to-day, one will see as lowly homes,
as acute poverty, and as congested a population, as he can find
anywhere in Europe, with this great difference,--our people are filled
with hope. There is a buoyancy about American life that is lacking in
Europe. It is, as Emerson expressed it, a land of opportunity; and
this difference is everything to the immigrant and the native pioneer.
And this means much to us. The great majority of immigrants are from
the most thrifty of the poor.