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[294] 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.
LOOKING FOR A TOWN LOT 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."

[295]"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[296] 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.
FORMING IN LINE TO VOTE FOR MAYOR FORMING IN LINE TO VOTE FOR MAYOR.
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Now imagine all this; and then six[297] 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,[298] 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[299] 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.

[300]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[301] 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.
INDIANS AT PAWNEE, OKLAHOMA TERRITORY. 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[302] 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.

[303]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[304] 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[305] 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.

I............