The Austin weekly statesman. (Austin, Tex.) 1883-1898, 1891-09-24
A MAD RUSH FOR LAND
IN EVERY CONCEIVABLE FASHION THE
BREAK WAS MADE AT NOON.
Three Times as Many Homeseekers as
Quarter-Sections-A Colony of Young
Ladies Mounted in Cowboy
Style in the Procession,

GUTHRIE, o. T., Sept. 22.-"The
land is yours" That is what every
timepiece on the border of the lands
opened to settlement today proclaim
ed when it's hands pointed to the houl
of noon. simultaneously with the ar
rival of that hour the home seekers
gathered on the border made a head.
long rush over the line into the COW
eted country, and on to the quarter
sections upon which their eyes had
been feasting for some days and others
for some months. The rush was q
mad one, and was made so by the fact
that the number of home seekers
greatly exceeded the number of
quarter sections available for
settlement. "First there first
served" was apparently the motto
of every racer. There was room in
the new lands for about 5000 settlers,
allowing 100 acres for each. There
were on the border waiting to claim
the available land fully $1,000 people,
so that there were three persons for
each section. 1t was no wonder that
the rush was mad one, for in this
case, at least, the race was invariably
to the swift. Like scenes have never
been witnessed before, except when
Oklahoma became the peoples two
years ago.
The craze to become an owner of a
part Of the new lands caused a
strange commingling of the various
elements of society. There was the
cowboy and the more effeminate
counter clerk, the gambler and the
preacher, the boniface, the settler and
the speculator, the boot leggers and
the frontier missionary, the business
man and the tramp, the man who had
left his country for his country's good
and the man who was an honor to his
locality, the man in his carriage and
the man in his prairie schooner, the
equestrian and pedestrian ,opthe border
before the hour of noon, and all were
intent on one Object-the securing of
~ lJlOOC vi lOlIlOIIOW UIl6 Will
GUS elements will arrange themselves
in their classes again. Today they
were all of one class-land seekers. A
half hours diligent work would have
sufhced to prepare a most elaborately
| equipped boomer for the race into the
new country, but preparations were
| begun long before the hour of
noon. Horses were hitched, wheels
We're creased, saddlegirths tightened
and everything made snug, as early
as 10 o'clock, so anxious was every one
to be in readiness to move at the ap-
pointed hour. Wagons were shifted
to new positions, whence their owners
thought that they could make more
advantageous start, for upon each
slight advantage depended, possibly,
the securing of the prizes. Upon each
disadvantage depended the failure to
secure. Time passes slowly in the
face of expectancy, and the morning
hours dragged their dreary lengths
out to an intermina BILE degree. In
the face of the slowness of the passage
of time, the calm demeanor of the
United States soluiers, stationed
around inside the border for the pur-
pose of excluding the home-seekers
until the noon hour, was exaspera-
perating. They paced backward and
forward as indifferent seemingly as if
the opening of q million or more
acres OF land was an every
day occurrence. But when the noon
hour did arrive, all the pent up ex-
citement found vent in the firing of
revolvers and rifles, shouting and
singing, and the cracking of whips
and the furious driving and running.
of course, had the advan-
Jage over every other man in the
race, and most of the racers
were hOrsemen. The man who
had gone to the border in prairie
schooner with his family, left his
schooner, family and one horse on the
border and mounted the other and
became horseman. After locating
lls claim he will return and direct
lis possessions to his new home. The
men who came to the new
place with nothing but money,
purchased saddle horses, ponies,
mules or any kind of animal that
YOU'D carry a man, while others
ented them. Some of the more des-
,erate COW boys mounted steers and
he latter joining in the stampede,
arried their riders to the interior,
while others were unceremoniously
lnhorsed, or unsteered, not far from {
he border. j
The boomers had gathered for the [
ace mostly at Tohee, on the Iowa [
'order directly east of Guthrie, Lang
ton at the middle of the northern
owa border, outside the boundary of
he Kickapoo reservation mot in 7
luded in the opened land), and a l
'oint on the POttawattamie border, a
irectly east of Purcell. Them de- a
irable land is situated in the Iowa a
nd Sac and Fox reservations, and a