Evening star., 1936-07-31

year it hugs the ground and Is so
tough that even the starved grass
hoppers, who are like clouds of back
edged gold as they swarm over the
fields with f1uttering wings, will not
eat it. The cows nibble at it and
their milk has bitter taste.
The old town, 30 miles south Of
Bismarck and 40 miles from the near
est railroad station, is haven of
refuge. Scattered over the surround
ing desert, miles apart, are the lonely
novels of the Indians and the white
wheat growers and cattle raisers. For
the most part they were built along
waterways or near water holes where
there was a chance to get drinking
water and where box elders and cot
tonwoods grew to furnish windbreaks
during the terrible prairie Winters.
Now the streams are ribbons of dust.
The water holes are patches of white
breaking the monotony of the pur-
plish-brown desert and the barren
gumbo dunes, which make the coun-
try like the Dakota Badlands. There
is hardly bit of water on the desert.
The motoriSt from Bismarck to Fort
Yates must carry drinking water with
him. There is no grass. The hordes
of graSshoppers have moved the
dune land like a titanic razor. The
country had no Spring. Ordinarily,
in May the gumbo dunes and the
rolling prairie turn tender green.
This year, the old settlers say, there
was no vernal interlude of transition
between the barrennesS of Winter and
the barrenness of late Summer. The
wheat never came up. The ploughed
fields are black patches in the monot-
ony of purplish-brown. Vegetable
gardens, fearsomely watered with
buckets so long as there was water
in the streams. came up and the ir-
resistible hordes of flying grasshop-
pers fell upon them. Up to q week
or SO ago the trees in the windbreaks
were green. Then the graSshoppers
started to feast on their leaves and
now they are beginning to look like
trees in late Autumn. Most of the
cattle have been sold, some for next
to nothing. The few that remain,
their ribs beginning to show, are
browsing pathetically at the roots of
the grasshopper-mown grass.
So there is nothing left to do but
flee. Even the grasshoppers can't live
in the barren land much longer. The
white men are fleeing, loading their
families in their battered cars and
setting out over the dusty desert. Some
of them were well-to-do farmers, with
big red barns-the sign of riches in
this land-a few years ago. Now they
are trying to make their way to the
Pacific Coast and the vegetable gar
dens and fruit orchards-carrying
canning outfits with them. They were
seeking work in the fields and orchards,
to be paid for in fruits and vegetables
which their wives will can on the spot.
They hope, in this way, to return to
their homes in the desert with enough
canned goods to last them over the
Winter. Next year there may be a
Spring again-or, in the meantime,
many Of them hope, the Resettlement
Administration may have done some
thing about it.
Indians Outlook Better.
It is different with the Indian. This
is his land and he intends to stay
here. Fort Yates is the administra-
tive headquarters of the $500, ,000-acre
Standing Rock Reservation of the
Northern Sioux There are $500 of
them. They are in as bad a fix as
their white neighbor, but, unlike him,
they haven't the gloomy alternative of
fleeing to greener pastures. They were
here before the white man came and
there is every reason to believe that
they will be here after he has gone
and the ghast1y mistake of his COM
ing corrected.
But even the Sioux cannot live in
lonely huts scattered over a waterless
desert with no other living things but
the grasshoppers. Their gardens are
black from the sun and the grass
hoppers. Their cattle are gone. The
Government sent them in some herds
last Fall, but they didn't have time
to become acclimated and many of
them perlshed in one Of the hardest
Winters the land has known for a
generation. The drought has forced
them to get rid of the rest. Their
gardens are ruined-even the COM
munal garden along the Missouri
River, which was laboriously furnished
with irrigation bitches by Indians who
in this way worked out their fines
after some gloriously drunken week
ends. The potatoes and beans prom