The progressive farmer and the cotton plant., 1905-06-13

due chiefly to the rush to the West "The State"
says Calvin 81. Wiley. presented the appearance
OF great camping ground whose inhabitants
were tented only for season"
When Oklahoma was Opened for Settlement.
The newest country opened up, of course, is
Oklahoma, and do not think I can do better than
to quote here what Mr.. Richard Harding Davis
says about how the lands were claimed when the
Government offered the land for settlement a few
years ago. Writing (in his book. "The West from
Car Window") he first describes the Pilgrim
landing, and continues:
81 should like you to place In contrast with this
the opening of Oklahoma Territory to the new
white settlers three years ago. These modern
pilgrims stand In rows twenty deep, separated
from the promised land not by an ocean, but by
line scratched in the earth with the point of
soldiers bayonet. The long row toeing this line
are bending forward, painting with excitement,
and looking with greedy eyes toward the
Canaan, the women with their dresses tucked up
to their knees, the men stripped of coats and
waistcoats for the coming race. And then,
trumpet call. answered by a thousand hungry
yells from all along the line and hundreds of men
and women foot and on horseback break away
across the prairie, the stronger pushing down the
weak, and those on horseback riding over, and in
some cases killing those foot. in mad,
seemly race for something which they are getting
for nothing These pilgrims do not drop
knee to give thanks decorously as did Columbus
(according to the twentydollar bills), but fall
both knees, and hammer stakes into the ground
and pull them up again. and drive them down
somewhere else, at place which they hope will
eventually become corner lot facing the post
office, and drag up the next mans stake. and
threaten him with Winchester because he is on
their land which they have owned for the last
three minutes. And there Indians in this
scene They have been paid one dollar and twen-
ty-fve cents an acre for the land-which is worth
five dollars an acre as it lies, before spade has
been driven into it or a bit of timber cut-and
they are safely out of the way"
The New Method.
This was the old picturesque method of open
ing up new lands for settlement. and it always in
volved fraud and bloodshed. While the law re-
quired that all competitors should start from the
border line, men would secrete themselves in
holes river banks, and tree tops nearest the most
desirable tracts, and often escape detection; and
rival claimants would often settle disputes with
bullets. "Under the system, the lands to be
opened are surveyed laid off in tracts of 100
each and maps made of the whole area At
certain time the land Offices nearest the lands
open registration books, and every man who de-
sires to secure parcel of the Indian land regis
ters. He need not inger on the spot for weeks,
as was the custom in the old days when the prize
was to the swift but can return to his home and
await the result of the drawing. On the day
fixed. the names of all persons registered are
placed in large box, shaken up, and withdrawn
one by one The first whose appears is
allowed to have the first choice of the tracts Of
fered the second man the second choice, ETC."
1t has seemed to me that it might be well in the
outset for us to get at the real significance of the
West, and what have written has been with this
v;au Tn NV next letter shall he somewhat less
serious, and light travel gossip and my personal