territory. A large section of it, which was once marked on the map as
the Great American Desert, had been left untouched, a dead possession
and a problem to the government, who did not know what use to make of it
until the homesteaders pushed west.
In the past two or three years, 200,000 homesteaders had taken up
claims, filing on more than 40,000,000 acres, making a solid coverage of
70,000 square miles. Those settlers and their families constituted a
million people. Ahead of this tidal wave, in the steady stream of
immigration, thousands of other settlers had moved west. Now there were
several million people who must subsist on the raw lands. They, with
others who had followed the homesteaders, were dependent upon their
success or failure to make the western prairie produce.
It had to produce! The West was the nation's reserve of natural
resources. The soil was to produce cereal gold, huge fields of wheat,
bread for a new people--bread, at last, for a world at war.
So the Public Lands question was of first importance. There must be new
land laws and other measures enacted for these people. It was a gigantic
task set for the men from out the West to perform. But already they had
begun to wield an influence on the affairs of the nation.
One heard of a man from Utah with the name of Smoot, who came from a
class of solid builders. He was bound to be heard more of in the
future, people said; and there appeared in Congress a man whose
indomitable force soon became recognized as something to contend with--a
man from Idaho named William E. Borah. Two other westerners had already
become statesmen of note. They had sprung from the sagebrush country.
Senator Francis E. Warren, and Congressman Frank W. Mondell--both of
Wyoming.
Senator Warren devoted a lifetime to the interests of the West.
Congressman Mondell, as Speaker of the House and chairman of the Public
Lands Committee, was an influence for the homestead country; and from
our own state, progressive, fearless, was Senator Peter Norbeck.
The frontier is big, but news travels over it in devious ways, and the
work of _The Wand_ and of Ida Mary and me began to be known in
Washington. My editorial fight for the settlers attracted the attention
of these officials from the West. From several of them we received
messages, commending our efforts and offering assistance in any feasible
way. I also received communications from Senator Warren and Congressman
Mondell, commenting upon my comprehension of the homestead issue. I was
asked to submit the problems of my people, and in return I sought
information from them.
Small things, those frontier newspapers, but _The Wand_ had achieved
what Ida Mary and I had hoped of it, it had been the voice of the
people, a voice heard across the prairie, across the Land of the Burnt
Thigh, across the continent to the doors of Congress itself. Its
protests, its recommendations were weighed at last by the men best able
to help the men and women on the Strip. And the little outlaw printer,
to her overwhelming surprise, was being recognized not only on the Strip
but beyond it, as an authority on the homesteading project and a
champion of the homesteaders.
It was back on the lookout of the outlaw printer and the outlaw horse
thieves, that I got another letter from Senator Warren, asking what my
plans were for the future and whether I had thought of carrying my work
farther on, work where "the harvest was great and the laborers few," he
said. Should I decide to go on into new fields, I could depend upon his
support. He would recommend my newspaper as an official one; there would
be many opportunities, probably government posts for which my particular
knowledge would qualify me.
While I was still undetermined as to what to do after my work on the
proof sheet was finished, I was not a career woman, and Senator Warren's
suggestions received little serious thought. Ida Mary, I thought, was
serving the West in the best way for a woman. Needles and thread and
bread dough have done more toward preserving nations than bullets, and
the women who made homes on the prairie, working valiantly with the
meager tools at their command, did more than any other group in settling
the West. It was their efforts which turned tar-paper shacks into
livable houses, their determination to provide their children with
opportunities which built schools and established communities.
I was content for a while to thrust the thought of the future out of my
mind, but I continued to watch with tense interest what was happening
to the homestead country. A new land law had been passed which had a
strong influence on the agricultural development of the West. It doubled
the size of homesteads to 320 acres. This would bring farmers and
families for permanent building. It would give them more pasture and
plenty of land to carry on the fallowing method. To discourage the
prove-up-and-run settler, it required three years, a certain amount of
fencing and eighty acres plowed to get a deed. It created a new land
splurge. A half-section! To the average homeseeker it was like owning
the whole frontier.
This law was called the Mondell Act, and President Theodore Roosevelt
proclaimed it "a great opportunity for the poor people--and a long
stride in the West's progress." Roosevelt had faith in the future of a
Greater America. The programs which he initiated were to accomplish
tremendous results in the building of the western lands.
With my bent for delving into the effect of land rulings on the settler,
I made inquiry regarding certain provisions of the Mondell Act. With the
information came a letter from its author, expressing his belief in the
advantages of the act to the homeseeker, and describing what it would do
in developing the territory farther west. He talked, too, about my work,
and my carrying it into new fields. Wyoming was bound to become a
homestead Mecca. And he added: "Your experience in South Dakota could,
no doubt, be made of great value in aiding in the development of
Wyoming."
A few days after I received Congressman Mondell's letter, C. H. West
arrived. Usually placid and genial, he was now wrought up. He came at
once to the point of his visit. Under the enlarged homestead law he was
extending operations farther west, where he was going to settle large
tracts. He wanted me to head bands of homeseekers into this new
territory, to help colonize it.
We were entering an era of colonization, of doing things in organized
groups, cooperative bodies. To the progress which these movements have
made in the United States much is owing to the West, where it was
developed through necessity.
Eastern men were forming profit-making corporations to colonize western
land. Real estate dealers were organizing colonies. Groups of
homeseekers were organizing their own bands. Mr. West had many inquiries
from such groups, and he had determined to do his own colonizing. They
would want me to go to eastern cities, he said, bring the colonists
west, and help locate them satisfactorily.
The locating fees, according to Mr. West, would run into money, and he
proposed to give me 50 per cent of the profits. "In addition," he
promised, "we will advance you a fair salary and all expenses."
I realized that I must face the future. The proof business on the Strip
was almost over. Henceforth the paper, and the post office which had
been transferred to me on Ida Mary's marriage, would eke out a bare
existence. And, as Ma Wagor complained, the Brulé was becoming so
settled "it would be havin' a Ladies Aid before long with the women
servin' tea and carryin' callin' cards around." That would be no place
for me.
For a long time I sat gazing out of the window over the open spaces.
What would this mean to the people whom I was to bring west? It was
they, not I nor any other individual, whose future must be weighed. The
tidal wave of western immigration would reach its crest in the next two
or three years, and break over Wyoming, Montana, Colorado--those states
bordering the Great Divide. It was to reach its high peak in 1917, when
the United States entered the World War.
I remembered the shaking hands, the faces of the men and women who had
lost at the Rosebud Drawing. There was still land for them. Land of
their own for tenant farmers, land for the homeless. The Land of a
Million Shacks--that was the slogan of the frontier.
"Where is this land?" I asked, finally.
"In Wyoming. Across the Dakota-Nebraska line. Reaching into the Rawhide
Country," Mr. West explained.
Rawhide country. Lost Trail. "A short-grass range, but rich," Lone Star
had said--"an honest-to-God country, bigger'n all creation."
I turned to Mr. West and faced him squarely. "Has it got water?"
He smiled at the sudden vehemence of the question and was ready for it.
"Yes, it has water. The finest in the world." Water clear and cold, he
told me, could be obtained at two to three hundred feet on almost any
spot. Out on the scattered ranches, in the middle of the range, one
found windmills pumping all day long. There would be plenty of water for
stock and for irrigating small patches.
"All right," I said, "I'll go."
The cartoonist was going back to Milwaukee. "Being here has done
something for me," he said. "Seeing so much effort given ungrudgingly
for small results, I think. I'm going back and do something with my art.
But it's odd--I don't really want to go back."
One by one the prove-up-and-run settlers had left the country, but Huey
Dunn, Chris Christopherson and others like them were learning to meet
the country on its own terms and conquer it. They were there to stay.
A young man appeared who was willing to run the newspaper, and I turned
the post office over to Ma Wagor. Amid the weird beating of tom-toms and
the hoo-hoo ah-ah-ahhh of the Indians across the trail, I set up my
farewell message in _The Wand_. In gorgeous regalia of beads and quills,
paint and eagle feathers, the Indians had come to send the Great Spirit
with Paleface-Prints-Paper on to the heap big hunting grounds. It was
the time of year when "paint" in all the variegated colors was
plentiful, gathered from herbs and flowers, yellow, copper, red. The
affair was probably more of an excuse to celebrate than an expression of
esteem. The Indians never miss an opportunity to stage a show. When they
attend a county fair or other public gathering, they load up children,
dogs and worldly goods, and in a long procession they set out, arriving
several days before the event and celebrating long after it is all over.
They had come prepared to camp for the night at the print shop, going
through special incantations for the occasion, but now they were
whooping it up around the campfire. I was dragged into the dance and
went careening around with old warriors and young bucks, the squaws
laughing at my mistakes.
As a farewell editorial I quoted the epitaph once engraved on a
tombstone: "He done his damnedest. Angels could do no more."
The eerie sound of the Indian dance had ceased. The flickering campfires
had died down. Only two years and four months since Ida Mary and I had
broken a trail to that first little homestead shack. And a chapter of my
life was closed.
Beyond, in the dark, slept men and women who had endured hardships and
struggles and heavy labor; who had plowed up the virgin soil and set
their own roots deep in it. They were here to stay.
In those two years they had built a little empire that would endure.
There were roads and fences, schools and thriving towns nearby where
they could market their products, and during the World War Presho became
the second largest hay-shipping point in the United States, with the
government buying trainloads of the fine native hay from the tall grass
country of the Brulé.
But my work on the Strip was ended. Big as the venture had seemed to me
in the beginning, it was only a fraction of the country waiting to be
tamed. And beyond there was Wyoming, "bigger'n all creation."
I was going empty-handed, with no fixed program or goal. After the
settlers were on the ground, there would be many obstacles which must be
overcome. Down to earth again! Even in the initial colonizing I would
have to depend on my own initiative, on my influence with the people,
and on my understanding of the homestead project. My experience on the
Brulé in getting settlers to work together would be invaluable. The
field would be new--but the principles of cooperative effort were always
the same.
Upon learning that I was going on with the development work, Senator
Warren wrote a letter filled with encouragement and information, and
Senator Borah expressed his interest.
Wyoming exemplified all the romance, the color, the drama of the old
Wild West. It was noted as a land of cowboys, wild horses, and fearless
men. As a commonwealth it was invincible. It was one of the greatest
sheep and cattle kingdoms in the world, where stockmen grazed their
herds over government domain, lords of all they surveyed.
In the past the big cattle and sheep outfits had brooked no
interference. One of the worst stockmen-settler wars ever waged had been
fought in Wyoming against an invasion of homesteaders, a war that became
so bloody the government had to take a hand, calling out the National
Guards to settle it. It was this section of the range country that I was
to help fill with sodbreakers.
The force of progress made it safer now, with the government and public
sentiment back of the homestead movement. These stockman-settler wars,
however, were not yet a thing of the past, and despite the years of
western development that followed, they continued to break out every now
and then in remote range country. In self-preservation stockmen of
various sections were making it difficult for the homesteader, and it
was certain that colonies of them would not be welcomed with open arms.
I knew all this in a general way, of course, but I had no trepidation
over the undertaking. My only qualms were on the score of health. It is
a poor trail-breaker who cannot travel with strong people, and that was
a drawback I couldn't overcome. All I could do was hope for the best and
rely on my ability to catch up if I should have to fall behind. I took a
chance on it. I rode to Ida Mary's, and found her rocking and sewing and
humming to herself in her new home.
"I'm going to help colonize Wyoming," I told her bluntly.
She let her sewing fall to the floor and sat staring at me, standing
bold and defiant in the middle of the floor. But my voice broke and I
threw myself across her bed crying. It was my first venture without Ida
Mary.
She did not say now, as she had done on other occasions: "How can you
help colonize a raw range country? You couldn't manage it." Life had
done something to us out here.
I started out from Ida Mary's. Out across the plain I turned and looked
back. She was still standing in the doorway, shading her eyes so as to
see me longer. We waved and waved, and I left her watching as the
distance swallowed me up.
* * * * *
At the shack I found Judge Bartine waiting for me. He observed the
traces of tears on my cheeks, but made no comment on them.
"You know," he said, "I'm glad you and your sister stuck through all
this."
I hesitated, on the verge of telling him how near I had come to giving
up and starting a back-trek.
"When the cattle-rustling gang I convicted burned the courthouse and my
office over my head," he went on after a little pause, "I made a narrow
escape. I didn't have a penny in the world left with which to fight, and
I knew perfectly well that I was in danger of being shot down every time
I went out of the door.
"But I had to stay. Men could go through Hades out here for years to get
a foothold and raise a herd of cattle and wake up one morning to find it
gone. Something had to be done with those cattle thieves."
"It seems to me," I told him, "the stockmen should have paid you awfully
well."
"I got my pay," he said quietly, "just as you have done; I got my pay in
the doing. So, Edith, I am glad you girls did not run away. I didn't
come before because I didn't want to influence you. I wanted to see you
do it alone."
When he had gone, I closed the door of the shack behind me. A man was
riding up the trail to meet me, bringing two messages. One from the
House of Representatives in Washington was signed F. W. Mondell. "I am
delighted," it read, "to know of your faith and confidence in the
country farther west, particularly the region to which you are going. I
trust the settlers whom you are instrumental in bringing into the
country will be successful, and I have no doubt that they will, if they
are the right sort. I wish you Godspeed and success." The other letter
was from Mr. West, who was awaiting me on the road to Wyoming with a
group of landseekers.
On top of the ridge I stopped and gazed at the cabin with no sign of
life around it, took my last look at the Land of the Burnt Thigh. A
wilderness I had found it, a thriving community I left it. But the sun
was getting low and I had new trails to break.
I gave Lakota the rein.
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| Transcriber's Note: |
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| Typographical errors corrected in text: |
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| Page 20 unescapable changed to inescapable |
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| Page 117 moustache changed to mustache |
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| Page 149 Wagors changed to Wagors' |
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| Page 197 Midafternoon changed to Mid-afternoon |
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| Page 266 Cedarfork changed to Cedar Fork |
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