St. Paul daily globe. [volume] (Saint Paul, Minn.) 1884-1896, 1884-08-09
0KL4H4M4P4YNE.

0KL4H ANA PAYNE.
Once more that adventurer and blather-
skite Payne has been arrested by federal
troops in the Indian Territory, and
the chances are, if the future may
be judged by the past, that he will be taken
to Fort Smith, and discharged without trial
or punishment As the telegraph accounts
have it, there were several hundred people
in the Territory with him who had squatted
on the lands of the Indian nations and had
made arrangement to stay. All the improve
ments which they had made were destroyed
and they were placed across the border on
Kansas soil, where they had come from.
This annual Payne raid into the Indian Ter
ritory is getting to be not only scandal but
is a swindle, inexcusable in its character and
serious iu its dimensions. For several years
this man Payne has succeeded in getting to-
gether large crowd of credulous emigrants,
under the assurance that he was about to
establish settlement in the Indian country,
which would be permanent. Each spring it
is announced from the southern borders of
Kansas that an encampment is established
for the rendezvous of emigrants; each time a
large number of people gathers, and each
year Payne moves bis crowd of cattle over
the border, and just as certainly each time
the government troops remove the intruders.
This constantly recurring affair is a delib-
crate fraud. The principals in it are Payne,
some railways leading along the vicinity OF
the Indian border, and one or two terminal
| iI,,,, 1r-bi oh
term themselves Quitting stations. The
profits of the swindle are to be found in the
receipts the railways derive from the crowds
of emigrants attracted by the annual an
nouncement of free settlement, and the
money spent by the emigrants in the out
fitting town selected for the starting or rally
ing point The rendezvous is announced in
the spring, people begin to arrive early in the
season; the move across the border is de-
layed to the last possible moment, so as to
afford to the adjacent town all the patronage
that the emigrants can supply, and then the
march is begun.
1t is time the government should put an
end to this annual confidence game in one
of two ways. Either Payne should be locked
up or otherwise punished so as to prevent
his yearly raid on the pockets of credulous
people, or else the land should be opened uI
for presumption and settlement. As the
matter is now managed the government is,
to some extent, paTticeps crimi'.iS in this cruel
swindling of emigrants. Apart from few
shrewd adventures mixed up with the
camps, the majority of the emigrants who
heed the call of Payne, are poor and Ignorant
people. who sicerely expect to better them
selves, and who have no knowledge thai
there is anything wrong in the promises o.
Payne, and who are only made aware of the
true condition of things when they are
driven out by the military, and find them
selves and their families impoverished ant
strangers in a strange land.
Let the chief swindler be placed where ht
can do no further harm, as is done by society
with notorious and confessed criminals. Ac
cording to all reports he is a drunken vaga
bond, in addition to being a sharper and ;
confidence operator. Let him be compelled
to retire for time from pubic life, or unit
such time as the government may conclude
to open the Oklahama region for legitinat,
! settlement