Grant County herald. [volume] (Lancaster, Wis.) 1850-1968, 1891-09-24

company of soldiers at the town has
orders to shoot, and blood will flow
freely if the attempt is made At Per-
kins 5000 people fought and struggled
to get on the bridge crossing the Cimar-
ron river, to be ready when the signal
was given to go.
At Langston the negroes are getting
very excited. The sight of a gang of
cowboys camped near by infamed
their anger and inutterings are heard
on every side. At Cimarron City 500
Presbyterians, led by a tall, raw
boned preacher, waited to be led
into the land of promise by their
modern Messiah At the Sac and
Fox agency on the east side the crowd
was turbulent and several men
were killed. Along the line whisky
jugs and bottles were plenty, and many
men were intoxicated. The 100 deputy
marshals and the handful of soldiers
were unable to do anything with the
crowd. The number of women on
horseback is remarkably large, and
fully 20 per cent. of the claims will be
secured by the fair sex.
In this city everything is deserted
Stores are closed, and doctors, lawyers,
preachers and every body have gone to
the new Eldorado The boomers
bought SO many supplies that pro-
vision famine now exists. Hundreds
of men who arrived on the midnight
train could not get conveyances and
are walking to the line, while scores
slept in the streets
When the noon hour arrived all the
pent-up excitement found vent in the
firing of revolvers and rifles, shouting
and singing and cracking of whips and
furious driving and running. The
horsemen, of course. had the adj
vantage over every other man
in the race, and most of the
racers were horsemen. A man who
had proceeded to the harbor in a prairie
schooner with his family left his
schooner, family and one horse on the
border and mounted the other and be-
came horseman. After locating his
claim he will return and direct his pos
sessions to his new home. Men who
came here with nothing but money pur-
chased saddle horses, ponies, mules or
any kind of an animal that would carry
a man, while others rented them. Some
of the more desperate cowboys mount
ed steers, and the latter joining in the
stampede carried their riders to the in
terror, while others were unceremoni-
ously endorsed or unsteered not far
from the border.
The boomers had gathered for the
race mostly at Tohee, on the Iowa
border, directly east of Guthrie, Langs-
ston, at the middle of the Northern
Iowa border, the inside boundary of
the Kickapoo reservation (which
was not included in the opened
lands) and at a point on the Pot
tawatomie border directly east of Pur-
cell The most desirable of the lands
are situated in the Iowa and Sac and
number of boomers naturally
congregated around them. The
boomers were distributed among the
various starting points about as fol
lows: At Tohee, 3, 0oO Langston, 1900
NEGROES and SOC whites; on the Kicka-
poo border 5, 000 and on the Pottawa-
tonne border. 1000 The allotments to
the Pottawatomie Indians nearly ex-
hausted the lands in their reservation 50
that the home-seekers had little chance
of locating claim there. At Lang
ston, negroes had been gathered by
the Negro Colonization society there
to the number of 1900, and they
were to move en- masse into the
Cimarron valley most fertile region,
and locate in a bunch. Five hundred