machines better--they go. My Pa's got one."
A tractor coming on the Strip! I ran to tell Ida Mary.
As it chugged and caterpillared from town through the Reservation, Chris
Christopherson's tractor caused almost as much excitement as the first
steamship up the Hudson. Men, women and children gathered about and
stared wide-eyed at the new machine as its row of plows cut through the
stubborn sod like a mighty conqueror. He was plowing a hundred acres.
A few cattlemen from the open country rode into the Strip to see it and
bowed their heads to this evidence of the coming of agriculture.
Old Ivar Eagleheart, Two-Hawk, and others of the Indian braves looked
on. This mystic power sealed their fate. It was in a last desperate
attempt to save territory for his race that an old Indian chief had
stood indomitable, contending with the White Fathers. "Wherever you find
a Sioux grave, that land is ours!" In this plowing up of the Indians'
hunting grounds no one thought of Sioux graves.
The McClure homesteaders had filed on their claims, proved up and gone,
many of them, leaving empty shacks. Here on the Strip were increasing
signs of permanency. Many Brulé settlers went back home and disposed of
whatever property they had in order to make permanent improvements on
their claims. Other machinery came. Within a radius of three miles of
Ammons three tractors ran all day. All night one could see their bright
headlights moving and hear their engines chug-chugging over the dark
plain, turning under the bluebells and anemones as they went, and the
tall grass where buffalo had ranged. Fragrant scent of wild flowers
blended with the pungent odor of new-turned earth and floated across the
plain. When those owning tractors got through breaking for themselves
they turned over sod for other settlers.
In every direction on the Brulé and all over the plains which had been
settled, teams went up and down, making a black and green checkerboard
of the prairie.
Ida Mary and I had Chris break and sow sixty acres of our land to flax.
It cost $300, and we again stretched our credit to the breaking point to
borrow the money. Try out fifteen or twenty acres first? Not we! If we
had a good crop it would pay for the land.
The winners in the Rosebud Drawing were swarming onto their claims,
moving their families and immigrant goods in a continuous stream. Towns
for many miles around were deluged with trade. It was estimated that the
Rosebud alone would add 25,000 new people to the West, with the
settlers' families, tradesmen and others whom the Rosebud development
would bring. A few groups of settlers from Chicago and other cities came
with a fanfare of adventure new to the homestead country. But many
stolid, well-equipped farmers, too, went into Tripp County, in which the
Rosebud lay.
I got a letter from the Chicago reporter saying: "I did not draw a Lucky
Number, but I came in on the second series to take the place of those
who dropped out. Am out on my land and feeling better. It was sporting
of you to offer to find a claim for me. Things are moving fast on the
Rosebud."
Word spread that homesteaders were flocking farther west in Dakota--to
the Black Hills--and on to the vast Northwest. That inexorable tide was
pressing on, taking up the land, transforming the prairie, forcing it to
yield its harvest, shaping the country to its needs, creating a new
empire.
We peopled and stocked the West by rail--and put vast millions in the
hands of the railroads. Wagon caravans moved on from the railroad into
the interior, many going as far as fifty, sixty, a hundred miles over a
trailless desert. Homesteaders who had no money and nothing to haul,
came through in dilapidated vehicles and lived in tents until they got
jobs and earned money to buy lumber. A few came in automobiles. There
were more cars seen in the moving caravans now.
It was not only settlers the railroads carried west now, it was tools
and machinery and the vast quantities of goods needed for comfort and
permanent occupation; and the increasing demand for these materials was
giving extra work to factories and businesses in the East.
On the Brulé we watched the growth of other sections of the West. At
home alone one evening, Ida Mary had carried her supper tray outdoors,
and as she sat there a rider came over the plains; she could barely
recognize him in the dusk.
"Lone Star!" she exclaimed as he stopped beside her.
He sat silent, dejected, looking over the broad fields. He had brought
the herd north to summer pasture.
"Did you escape the pesky homesteaders by going south?" she laughed.
"No," he said soberly. "They're all over. Not near as thick as they are
here, but Colorado and New Mexico are getting all cluttered up. Old
cattle trails broke--cain't drive a herd straight through no
more--why--" he looked at her as though some great calamity had
befallen, "I bet there's a million miles o' ba'b wire strung between
here and Texas! Shore got the old Brulé tore up."
She laughed. "Better not let my sister hear you say that. Look at our
crop coming up."
"I didn't think you'uns would stick it out this winter," he said.
"Most of the settlers stayed," she assured him.
"Looks like the end of the free range," he said. "Cattle business is
going to be different from now on." He smiled wanly and asked for his
mail, which consisted only of a pile of back-number copies of a
newspaper. He took them and rode "off to the southeast," the vague
description he had given us as to where he belonged.
But he had brought news. The stream of immigration was flowing in to the
south and west of us, into country which was talked of as more arid and
more barren than this tall grass country. The barb-wire told the story.
The United States had entered an era of western development when the
homesteaders not only settled the land, but moved together, acted
together, to subdue the land. It was an untried, hazardous venture on
which they staked everything they had, but that is the way empires are
built. And this vast frontier was conquered in the first two decades of
the twentieth century; a victory whose significance has been almost
totally ignored by historical studies of the country, which view the
last frontier as having vanished a generation or more before.
Iron trails pushed through new regions; trails crossing the network of
new civilization broadened into highways, and wagon tracks cut their way
where no trails ever led before. New towns were being built. Industry
and commerce were coming in on the tidal wave. A new America!
No cut-and-dried laws, no enforced projects or programs of a federal
administration could possibly achieve the great solid expansion which
this voluntary land movement by the masses brought about naturally.
It takes almost every commodity to develop a vast dominion that has lain
empty since Genesis. It took steel for railroads, fences, and
plowshares. It took lumber and labor--labor no end, in towns and out on
the land. It took farm machinery, horses, harness, stoves, oil, food and
clothing to build this new world.
I was delighted when one day there came a letter from Halbert Donovan,
the New York broker. It contained great news for _The Wand_. And there
was a little personal touch that was gratifying.
"We are beginning to feel the effect of a business expansion back here,"
he wrote, "which the western land development seems to be bringing
about. If it continues, with all the public domain that is there, it is
bound to create an enormous demand in industry and commerce. And I
emphasize the statement I made to you that it is a gigantic project
which a government alone could finance, and which requires the work of
powerful industrial corporations.
"But, looking over that desolate prairie, one wonders how it can be
done; or if it is just a splurge of proving up and deserting. However,
it is surprising what these homesteaders are doing, and it is ironic
that a little poetic dreamer should have foreseen the trend which things
are taking. And I feel you deserve this acknowledgment. How in the name
of God have you and your sister stuck it out?"
The reason that Halbert Donovan was interested in the progress of this
area, I learned, was that his company had mining investments in the
Black Hills and it was investigating a proposed railroad extension
through the section.
The expansion which was beginning to be felt across the continent grew
for five years or more up to the beginning of the World War, and then
took another spurt after the war. It was not merely a boom, inflation to
burst like a bubble. It grew only as more territory was settled and
greater areas of land were put under cultivation.
"Do you know what we need out here most of all?" I said to Chris
Christopherson one day, having in mind a settlers' bank.
"Yah, yah!" Chris broke in, his ruddy features beaming in anticipation.
"A blacksmith shop! More as all else, we need that. Twenty-five miles we
bane goin' to sharpen a plowshare or shod a horse yet."
Trade, business, industry? Yes, of course. But first the plow must pave
the way. During those years money flowed from the farm lands rather than
to them. The revenue from the homestead lands was bringing millions into
the Treasury.
That spring the newspaper office became a clearing house for homestead
lands. People wanting either to buy or sell relinquishments came there
for information. All kinds of notices to be filed with the Department of
the Interior were made out by the office, which began to keep legal
forms in stock. Gradually I found myself becoming an interpreter of the
Federal Land Laws and settlers came many miles for advice and
information.
The laws governing homesteading were technical, with many provisions
which gave rise to controversy. I discovered that many of the employees
in the Department knew nothing of the project except the letter of the
law. Through my work in handling proofs I was familiar with the
technicalities. From actual experience I had learned the broader
fundamental principles as they could be applied to general usage.
I became a sort of mediator between the homesteader and the United
States Land Office. It was a unique job for a young woman and brought my
work to the attention of officials in Washington and several
Congressional public land committees. Slowly I was becoming identified
with the land movement itself, and I had learned not to be overawed by
the fact that some of the government's under-officials who came out to
the Strip did not agree with my opinions. I had clashed already with
several of them who had been sent out to check up on controversies in
which the homesteaders' rights were disputed. They knew the
technicalities better, perhaps, than I did; but in regard to conditions
on the frontier they were rank amateurs and I knew it.
Land on the Brulé was held at a premium and landseekers were bidding
high for relinquishments. So attractive were the offers that a few
settlers who were hard pressed for money, sold their rights of title to
the land, and passed it on to others who would re-homestead the claims.
Several early proof-makers sold their deeded quarters, raw, unimproved,
miles from a railroad, for $3000 to $3700 cash money.
Real estate dealers of Presho, Pierre, and other small towns looked to
the Brulé as a plum, trying to list relinquishments there for their
customers. But I got the bulk of the business! One of the handy men
around the place sawed boards and made an extra table with rows of
pigeonholes on it, and we installed this in the back end of the print
shop for the heavy land-office business.
Most of our work on land affairs was done free in connection with the
legal work of the newspaper. Then buyers or sellers of relinquishments
began paying us a commission, and one day Ida Mary sold a claim for spot
cash and got $200 for making the deal. Selling claims, she said, was as
easy as selling _shela_ (tobacco) to the Indians. The difficulty lay in
finding claims for sale.
The $200 went to Sedgwick at the bank on an overdue note. He had moved
into a bank building now, set on a solid foundation, instead of the
rolling sheep wagon whose only operating expense was the pistols.
That entire section of the frontier was making ready for the incoming
torrent of the Rosebud settlers to take possession of their claims.
Droves of them landed at Presho early, reawakening the town and the
plains with a new invasion. Thousands who had not won a claim followed
in their wake, and everyone, when he had crossed the Missouri River,
heard about the Brulé.
The government sent out notice for the appointment of a regular mail
carrier for the Ammons post office. Dave Dykstra had resigned to farm
his land, and Sam Frye, a young homesteader with a family, was
appointed.
We began to need more printing equipment to carry on the increased
newspaper business and to take care of the flood of proofs which would
come in that summer; there was interest and a payment on the press
coming due. So there was a day when Ida Mary said we were going to go
under, unless we could do some high financing within thirty days.
"Oh, we'll get through somehow," I assured her. "It's like a poker game;
you never know what kind of hand you will hold in the next deal."
Planning ahead didn't help much, because something unexpected usually
happened.
But no matter what hard luck a homesteader had or how much he had paid
the government, unless he could meet the payments and all other
requirements fully he lost the land and all he had put into it. We could
not afford to lose our claim, so I concentrated on my Land Office
business.
As usual, something happened. I was sitting in the private office of the
United States Land Commissioner in Presho when a man walked into the
front office and put a contest on a piece of land. I heard the numbers
repeated through the thin partition and I knew exactly where the land
lay; it was a quarter-section south of us on the reservation, which
belonged to a young man who had to abandon it because he was ill and
penniless. He had got a leave of absence which had run out, and he had
no funds to carry on and prove up the claim. Yet he had put into the
gamble several hundred dollars and spent almost a year's time on it.
Now he was to lose it to the man who had contested it.
Nothing could be done to save the land for the man who had gone home; he
had forfeited it. I started from my chair. The contest must be filed in
Pierre. If I could get one in first, I could help out the man whose
illness had deprived him of his land, and help out the ailing Ammons
finances. But it would be a race!
Through the outer office I rushed while the land agent called after me,
"Just a minute, Edith!"
"I'll be back," I told him breathlessly. "I'll be back. I just thought
of something!"
I made the trip from Presho to Ammons in record time, raced into the
post office and filled out a legal form with the numbers I had heard
through the thin wall. But I needed someone not already holding a claim
to sign it, and there wasn't a soul at the settlement who would do.
It was getting dark when Ida Mary finally announced jubilantly that
someone was coming from the direction of the rangeland. It was Coyote
Cal, thus called because "he ran from the gals like a skeered coyote."
Talking excitedly, I dragged him into the print shop to sign the paper.
"I don't want any doggone homestead pushed off onto me," he protested.
I thrust the paper into his hands. "It won't obligate you in any way," I
explained.
"All right," he agreed. He enjoyed playing jokes and this one amused
him. "But you're sure I won't get no homestead?"
Coyote poised the pen stiffly in his hand. "Let's see," he murmured in
embarrassment, "it's been so gosh-darn long since I signed my
name--danged if I can recollect--" the pen stuck in his awkward fingers
as he swung it about like a lariat.
Finally he wrote laboriously "Calvin Aloysius Bancroft."
With the signed paper in my hands I saddled Lakota and streaked off for
the thirty-five-mile trip to Pierre.
Late that night a tired horse and its rider pulled up in front of a
little hotel in Ft. Pierre. I routed a station agent out of bed and sent
a telegram to the young man who had left his claim.
Next morning when the U. S. Land Office at Pierre opened its door the
clerks found me backed up against it with a paper in my outstretched
hand. Half an hour later, when the morning mail was opened at the Land
Office, there was a contest in it filed at Presho. But I had slapped a
contest on the same quarter-section first, a contest filed by one Calvin
Aloysius Bancroft, a legal applicant for the claim.
In the mail I received a signed relinquishment for the land from the
young man, withdrew the contest and sold the relinquishment, which is
the filer's claim to the land, for $450. I had made enough on the deal
to meet our own emergencies and had saved $200 for the young man who
needed it badly.
And _The Wand_ was still safe. All around us the land was being
harnessed, a desert being conquered with plowshares as swords.
Scotty Phillips stopped in at the print shop on his way from Pierre,
where he lived, to his ranch. "The stockmen have been asleep," he said.
"They ridiculed the idea that the range could ever be farmed. And now
they are homesteading, trying to get hold of land as fast as they can. I
have Indian lands leased, so I am all right."
As a squaw man he naturally owned quite a bit of land, a piece for each
child, and he had three children.
Panicky, some of the stockmen filed on land, but a homestead for them
was just big enough for the ranch buildings and corrals; it still did
not allow for the essential thing--large range for the cattle. They
began to buy from homesteaders and lease lands around them. For years
the livestockman of the West had been monarch of all he surveyed, and
the end of his reign was in sight. Like all classes of people who have
failed to keep step with the march of progress, he would have to follow
the herd.
A strong spirit of cooperation and harmony had developed among the army
of the Brulé. They worked together like clockwork. There was little
grumbling or ill-will. Just how much _The Wand_ had done in creating
this invaluable asset to a new country I do not know, but it was a
factor. We were a people dependent upon one another. Ours was a land
without established social law or custom. It was impossible to regulate
one's life or habits by any set rule; and there was no time or energy
for idle gossip or criticism. Each one had all he could do to manage his
own business.
I had been working at high pressure, and as summer came on again I went
back to St. Louis for a few weeks of rest, back down the Mississippi on
the Old Bald Eagle to find my father waiting at the dock. I had half
expected to find the family awaiting roaring stories of the West;
instead, they listened eagerly and asked apt questions about soil and
costs and the future. Things weren't going well for them. Perhaps for
my father and the two small boys the future would point west.
I was surprised to find the general interest that people in St. Louis
were taking in the West and in homesteading. Its importance, something
even of its significance, was coming to be realized. They asked serious
questions and demanded more and more information about the land.
Business men talked about new opportunities there. "Bring lots of new
business, this land movement," I heard on many sides.
After those long months of struggle for the bare necessities, I was
greatly struck by lavish spending. It seemed startling to one from
pioneer country. Where did the money come from, I wondered, that city
folk were spending like water? I had come to think of wealth as coming
from the land; here people talked of capital, stocks and bonds;
occasionally of trade expansion. Surely this western development, I
protested, was responsible in part for trade expansion. Ida Mary had
said I ran to land as a Missourian did to mules; for the first time I
began to consider it as an economic issue.
I was restless during my stay in St. Louis; the city seemed to have
changed--or perhaps I had changed--and I was glad to get back home. It
was the first time I had called the West home.
Unbelievably unlike my first sight of the desolate region, I found it a
thriving land of farms and plowed fields, of growing crops and bustling
communities, whose growth had already begun to affect the East, bringing
increased business and prosperity, whose rapid development and
far-reaching influence people were only slowly beginning to comprehend.
All this had been achieved in less than two years, without federal aid,
with little money, achieved by hard labor, cooperation, and unquenchable
hope.
[Illustration]
XIII
THE THIRSTY LAND
"You'd better do a little exhortin'," Ma told me on my return to the
claim. "And if you get any collections, turn some of them in for the
good of the store."
"Isn't business good?"
"Business is pouring in. It's money I'm talking about; there won't be
any money until the crops are threshed--which will be about Christmas
time out here. Now in Blue Springs--"
I didn't hear the rest of it. In the city I had been struck by the
lavish spending of money, money which was at such a premium out here.
There was something shockingly disproportionate in the capacity to
spend by city people and those on farms.
"At least, the crops look good."
"But," Ida Mary pointed out, "they need rain, and the dams are beginning
to get low."
"What about the wells the settlers are digging for water supply?"
"They get nothing but dry holes," she told me. "Some of the settlers
brought in well-drills, but they didn't find water. They don't know what
to do."
All other issues faded into the background before the urgency of the
water problem. I packed my city clothes deep down in the trunk, never to
be worn again, and went to work!
A casual glance revealed no sign of the emergency we were facing. The
Lower Brulé was a broad expanse of green grass and grain, rippling
gently in the breeze like water on a quiet sea. Sufficient moisture from
the snow and early rain had been retained in the subsoil for vegetation.
But we needed water. With the hot weather the dams were going dry. There
had been increased demands for water this summer, and there had not been
the late torrential rains to fill the dams as there had been the year
before.
"What are we going to do?" I asked the other settlers.
"Haul water until we can get wells. We'll have to dig deeper. Perhaps we
have just not struck the water veins. After this we will follow the
draws."
Water-hauling again! But haul it from where? There was no supply in the
country sufficient for the needs of the region. Drills would cost money,
and few settlers had any money left. There was no sign of rain, and an
oppression weighed upon everyone as of impending evil--the fear of a
water famine.
First we had come to understand the primitive worship of fire. Now we
began to know that water is as vital to life as air itself. It takes
experience to bring home the meaning of familiar words.
In the meantime the tall waving crops brought land agents with their
buyers. At the first sign of water shortage more claims were offered for
sale, and by that time there were a few deeded tracts put on the market.
Loan agents camped at the settlement, following up settlers ready to
prove up. One could borrow more than a thousand dollars on a homestead
now.
The money coming through our hands on relinquishments, options,
government payments, etc., was mainly in bulk and growing beyond the
coffee cans and old shoes where we secreted money awaiting deposit at
the bank. We did need a bank on the Brulé.