Sturgis advertiser. (Sturgis, Dakota [S.D.]) 1887-1???, 1890-10-23
THE RESERVATION LANDS.

The Huronite continues to harp ON the
unftness of the reservation for settle
ment, and points to the route the editors
took from Pierre to Rapid City, and says
''there is not settler on the route" and
leaves the reader to the false inference
that it is because the lands are good for
nothing, when it knows that the reserva-
ton was not opened until last spring,
and the United States surveyors were
not set at work until the middle of June
1t knows that settlers do not rush on to
occupy lands that they cannot locate
accurately until surveyed. The survey
ors work is not yet half done and no
plats have been approved or fled in the
land office and yet with an instinct for
misrepresentation that has characterized
all of it's capital discussions, the Huron
tie points to the fact that settlers are not
rushing to an unsurveyed country, un-
supplied with railroads, or other facili-
ties as an evidence that those lands are
worthless. How many settlers rushed
into Beadle, Sphinx, Brown or Codington
counties before the land was surveyed or
how many before the railroad went ahead
of them? Is the memory of the Huron
tie so short, or was it's editor not here in
those days? Well, we were; we were
here before the railroad reached Huron,
or there was settler in Beadle county
and have seen all this country settle and
develop and it would have all been un-
settled prairie today had not the rail-
roads built ahead as they did of all settle
ment and made it possible to live and
test this country, all of which was pro-
nounced by the press and people of west
ern Minnesota as an uninhabitable waste
without rainfall, and good for nothing
but stock raising. But with the rail
roads and their stations, when a small
store, blacksmith shop, drug store, etc.,
made it possible for the settler to get the
necessary supplies, there came here few
settlers, and then in Sphinx county few.
and then in Beadle and Brown county,
who ventured to try this desert, where
in 1879 water could not be found from
Watertown to the Jim river, distance
of seventy five miles, and the traveller
across carried a water supply with him;
and despite all assertions to the contrary
splendid crops were raised in 1873, 1879,
1880 and 1881, and reports of settlers to
their friends and great boom editions OF
county newspapers, counteracted the lies
Of Minnesota people, and the people
came to see and settle. and the number
increased to tidal wave. It was new
feature of settlement to have railroads at
the farmers door when he built instead
OF waiting forty years for railway and
hauling his grain hundred miles to
market. So of the reservation. Huron
and it's advocates for capital have assailed
the reservation with wantonness of mis-
representation and lies that for shameful
devilishness OF intent has no parallel that
we know OF; and having thus done it's
dirty work OF slandering and belittling
one-half OF onr great state and raising in
the minds OF the eastern people all the
doubts and fears possible as to the reser-
walton, while yet no railroad is building
west from Pierre and the government
surveyors have not half of it surveyed
and no plats fled from which to enter
lands, the Huronite has the shameless
presumption TO point intelligent settlers
who can appreciate all we have said bet
ter than we can write it, to the fact that
settlers are not rushing onto the reser-
walton this season as proof that the lands
west Of the river are good for nothing.
! Honest farmers Of South Dakota, what