Wichita eagle. [volume] (Wichita, Kan.) 1886-1890, 1889-01-12
BELIEVED TO BE WORTHLESS.

1t is curious to note that these great plains
were believed until very recently to be worth
less for any purpose Of agriculture, that they
were arid and desert like and that no crops
could be raised upon them except by costly
irrigation. This, however. was the home of
the powerful Lacotahs Dakotas) and here
roamed the countless herds of buffalo, an ami
NAL without which the Indian could not live;
whose skin gave him shelter and clothing; its
body food
An animal that reckless slaughter has made
extinct; IN animal whose extinction has made
the red man dependent upon the whites for
support; an animal which could have been
doubtless easily domesticated and which
would have formed a source of food and labor
service of great value to this region, in which
it was indigenous; an animal slaughtered for
the mere pleasure Of killing; its meat and its
hide abandoned, its extinction is blot upon
the-prevention Of cruelty to animals-civili-
zation or upon the legislation of a people
which permitted it.
Notwithstanding the belief that these plains
were worthless, they were and are covered
with hardy wild grasses, these including the
buffalo or gramma grass, consisting of low
tufts Of curling blades, holding up here and
there q seed stem, looking for all the world
Ike an ordinary bristle counter brush in
miniature As stated before, these grasses
cure on the ground, and furnish food more
nutritious than tame hay, and one which
cattle can be turned out upon the winter
through and come out in the spring fatter
than they were in the beginning of winter
These wild grasses are now cut by the farm
ers stacked the same day as cut, and will
keep good in stack for seven CT eight years
This hay crop forms source of cash income
to the settlers until such time as they can in
close their lands and get other crops
WHY CALLED bad LANDsn
The Bad Lands are SO called, not because
they were useless or sterile, but because they
were bad lands to travel through" accord
ing to the accounts of the early French voy-
OCCURS up fhe Missouri The Bad Lands form
q prehistoric cemetery in which the remains
of extinct animals are abundant and many
Of which were giants in their way-repciles
from ten to seventy feet long, sea animals
reaching eighty feet in length, turtles whose
fiippers reached fifteen feet, and bird-liko
creatures whose wings spread twenty-five
feet
These plastic clays, smoothly leveled, the
streaks Of differing strata clearly defined, be-
long to the later cre5aceoUs deposits, and are
200 feet thick and stretch from Pierre, on the
Missouri, westward along the Cheyenne and
White river regions The geologic age
which produced this deposit was the
age Of mammals, and is splendidly de-
veloped in this region. Quantities of re-
mains exist Of extinct creatures typical OF
the elephant, rhinoceros, camel, lion, tiger
etc Nowhere does the erosion Of the ancient
rocks by ice and food seem more wonderful
such a vast accumulation of drift material,
clays, sands and gravel, in places hundreds
of feet in depth and covering hundreds OF
thousands Of equare miles in area
Science shows conclusively that our cont
nent is one of the Oldest in its uplift-that
many portions of il were prepared for the
existence of man at tine when Europe and
the east was slowly forming under TIE sea.
The extent of the fossil remains OF gigantic
but extinct animals shows that the region Of
the Bad Lands was densely crowded by
living creatures, which, though now extinct,
existed long before theallied types now found
in the newer regions Of Africa and Asia
Frederick Stea-ns l. DerToi: Free Press