The daily morning journal and courier. [volume] (New Haven, Conn.) 1894-1907, 1902-04-26


Pacific and Kansas Pacific and Sante
Fe railroads had driven the Indians out
of the country north of Texas, that part
| Watered by the Platte river and its
tributaries, the Texas herds were driv-
en- up slowly, feeding by the way, to
these railroads for shipment to Chicago
and other markets. AS the immense re-
| gion extending from the gulf of Mexico
on the south to the British possessions
on the north, the Mission river on the
| east to the Rocky Mountains on the
west, was practically uninhabited, it
was taken possession of by the cattle
men and used as grazing grounds for
such cattle as could not find a profit
able market in the East. This was all
government land to which the cattle
men had no title, and to which, SO far
as know they never made any claim,
contenting themselves with simply
using it for pasture.
This region included the present
states of Kansas, the Nebraska, Wyom-
ing, Colorado, Montana, the Dakotas,
Oklahoma and the Indian territory. But
the advent of railroads brought great
numbers of settlers from the East, who
took up homesteads or bought lands the
government had parceled out to the
railroads, every alternate five miles
square. Pushing out from Omaha Kan
sas City and Atchison, they occupied
the land by government title and
crowded the unpropertied cattlemen
further and further west, till the states
of Nebraska and Kansas We're practi-
50
We're driven into Wyoming, the Dakotas
and Montana. Now came veritable
struggle for existence, for the ranchers
as the settlers are called, kept taking
up the land suitable for farming
through Oklahoma Colorado and Wy
oming and as the cattlemen had no I'll
tie, they We're forced to move west or
fight. They began by fencing in with
barbed wire hundreds of thousands of
acres of grazing land to which they
had no shadow of right. intending
thereby to keep settlers out The set
tiers cut the fences and went in, and
constant warfare with bloodshed and
any amount of il-feeling, was the re-
suit
On the outer edge of the advancing
wave of honest settlers, the pioneers of
our civilization, is mass of humanity
the like of which is never seen in the
East. Landless men, outlaws, crimi-
nails, fugitives from the law, whose
hands are aginast every man and every
mans hands against them, the fotsam
and jetsam Of the wave of progress like
guerrllas in war time, these banditti
keep constant raid on the cattle
ranges, driving off detached bands of
Cheyenne or Denver, or killing on the
spot 1t goes without saying that there |
are constant battles between the stock
men and the marauders, with bloodshed |
The the government stepped in and or
dered the cattle men to take down their |
fences and throw off the land. Lately !
Col Mosby, of civil war fame, has been |
ordered West to see the mandate car
ried out. The removing of the fences |
gives the cattle opportunity to wander, |
which they are prompt to avail them
selves of, thereby increasing the oppor-
tunity for plumber on the part of cat
tie thieves and requiring an increase of
cowboy guards. Now the sheep men
rave invaded the cattle ranges, and
lere is literally war to the knife for
,attle will not feed where sheep are or
rave been. Whether this is owing to
he strong and offensive odor left be-
lind by sheep, or whether because
heep eat the grass down to the roots,
I'M not informed, but certain it is that
heep and cattle will not herd together.
very bitter feeling exists between the
'attle owners and the sheep men, and
much violence and bloodshed have re-
ulted. Recently the cattle men drove
band of 5000 sheep over a precipice,
,illing the whole herd and the herders
lso II stands to reason that sheep
men will retaliate, but all the same the
attic men will be pushed north and
vest.
In addition to all the disadvantages |
he cattle men are threatened every
winter with the most dreaded and
readful danger, the blizzard, against |
which no human care or foresight avails
particle. This storm wind, rising
in the Arctic circle and
altering force on it's way, strikes the
ountry east Of the Rocky Mountains !
nd continues with violence undated
|