Blandford Weekly News. — 1889-05-11 (Blandford, Dorset, England)

HISTORY OF OKLAHOMA.  A very interesting history of the tract of territory which has become of late so famous is given by the New York correspondent of the Daily News. Oklahoma, he says, signifies, in the musical and expressive language of the Chickasaw Indians, "Beautiful Land,' and was originally applied to the more fertile portions of a vast tract of land lying in the centre of what is known as the Indian temtory. It contains some of the richest land to be found anywhere in the world, and also vast tracts of the most sterile land in America' on some portions of which salt is two inches in depth. There are hundreds of square miles of this barren waste, without a drop of drinkable water. There are in the new Oklahoma territory nearly 1,900,000 acres. At least half of it is finely adapted for agriculture, and many portions of it are known to contain valuable mineral deposits. It is irrigated by fine streams of water, of which the Canadian River is the largest. The banks of this rise in some places into precipitous bluffs 300 feet in height, from which there is a wonderfully beautiful view over miles of country. For 10 years the name of Oklahoma has been familiar in the American newspapers, and its praises have been sounded loudly and almost incessantly during that period. There is little doubt that the men who began the systematic work of exciting interest in the new country were the hired agents of railway companies who had obtained concessions for building railways through the Indian territory and wished to have it settled as soon as possible in order to create business for their roads. It was expressly provided in these concessions that the railway companies should forfeit their privileges if they aided or abetted in any way the opening of the Indian territory to white settlement. This was necessary, to keep the whites from crowding in and depriving the Indians of their reservations. But the railway companies could do in secret what they dared not do openly. They are believed to have paid men large sums of money to organise raids into the country and attempt to , make settlements. The leader in this raiding, which ' took early the name of "booming," was an Indiana adventurer named Payne,who has passed into history .as the original Oklahoma Boomer. He went to Kansas in 1878 and in company with other men of similar characteristics, organised a land company called the Oklahoma Town Company, and another called the South-west Colony Company. After vigorous agitating they succeeded in getting together, in the spring of 1880, about 25 men who were willing to begin the invasion. After dodging the United States troops for several days they at last reached a suitable i print n Oklahoma, and those a site for their town. They gave it a name, defined an area of six square miles, built a log house, and began to cut down trees and lay out town lots. They got on famously for about three weeks, when a squad of United States troops appeared and took away the entire population to prison. After two weeks' imprisonment, Payne and his companions were discharged. They found themselves heroes, for the West looked upon them as sufferers from the despotic power of the Government. In the fall of 1880 Payne had a new expedition of 200 men in camp on the Kansas border, eager for a fresh invasion, and from the autumn of 1880 till that of 1884 there were invasions at pretty regular intervals. Squads of boomers would slip by the troops' invade Oklahoma, locate lands, be discovered by the troops and ejected, only to start again. The largest expedition ever organised by Payne was in May, 1884, when he got into Oklahoma with a colony of 600 men, women, and children, and founded the town of Rock Falls. In the August following Payne was again arrested and his town broken up. He was kept in prison only a short time, and was busily at work organising a fresh expedition when death overtook him. Other leaders followed him, and the business of invading Oklahoma went on with constantly increasing force; each new raid attracting fresh attention to the country, and exciting deeper interest in it. Then the politicians in Congress took up the subject. A bill was passed creating the territory of Oklahoma, and a proclamation by the President announced that the territory would be thrown open to settlement on April 22 of this year. For at least two years before this proclamation, while as yet no one could have assurance that a territory would be created at any fixed time, people began to gather in steadily increasing numbers along the border, until they called their settlements cities, gave them names (like Beaver City and Purcell), had hotels and stores, and populations amounting i frequently persons. to 1,500 Yet there scarcely was n any of them a permanent building. When the long-expected 22nd of April arrived, Purcell and all its sister boomer settlements went down literally like a house of cards.  Joseph King—a wealthy resident of West Farms, a hamlet near Westfield Centre, Mass.—had a son of recklessly dissolute habits. The other morning he appeared at the house, shot his father dead, set Ere to the premises, and then, going a short distance away, committed suicide.  A suicide of an appalling nature has been perpe trated in the Borough, in the presence of a large number of spectators. Just as a heavily-laden van was proceeding towards St. George's Church, a man of medium height, and apparently about 30 years of age, stepped off the pavement, and placing his head on the ground, allowed the wheels of the van to pass over his neck. Death was instantaneous. The poor fellow was cleanly clad, and had the appearance of a mechanic out of employment.  Mr. Ashmead-Bartlett, M.P., has been entertained at dinner by the National Union of Conservative and Constitutional Associations. A testimonial, with an address bearing the signatures of 900 chairmen of Conservative associations and clubs, was presented to him.  A terrible accident has happened to the daughter of Mr. G. Horan, a stonemason. She was playing in her father's yard, when a head-stone, weighing between four and five hundredweight, fell upon her, crushing her in such a terrible manner that she died in the muse of a few minutes.