Read Which Way to the Wild West? Online
Authors: Steve Sheinkin
Which Way to the Wild West? (21 page)
W
as there any good farmland still available in the West? Yes, but it was in the huge chunk of land called Indian Territory, where more than fifty tribes were living. Congress studied the mapsâand decided Indians didn't need quite so much land. The government bought big pieces of the territory and declared the land would soon be open to settlers.
as there any good farmland still available in the West? Yes, but it was in the huge chunk of land called Indian Territory, where more than fifty tribes were living. Congress studied the mapsâand decided Indians didn't need quite so much land. The government bought big pieces of the territory and declared the land would soon be open to settlers.
That explains what 100,000 people were doing on the border of Indian Territory on the warm, sunny morning of April 22, 1889. The government had announced that two million acres would be open to settlers at noon. What did you have to do to claim 160 acres? Just be the first one there.
When the army bugler began blowing at noon, his horn was instantly drowned out by the thundering clomp of feet pounding dirt. People raced ahead on horses, on foot, on bicycles.
A reporter named William Howard joined the land rush just to watch the action. “A cloud of dust rose where the home-seekers had stood in line,” he wrote, “and when it had drifted away before the gentle breeze, the horses and wagons and men were tearing across the
open country like fiends.” Of course, people on fast horses pulled into the lead. They hurried to the land they wantedâonly to find other homesteaders had gotten there sooner. It was pretty obvious these “sooners” had snuck onto the land before it was legally open for settlement. One guy was even found sitting on a claim where the leafy tops of vegetables could clearly be seen sprouting from a garden! (He said he had planted the seeds fifteen minutes before.
The soil must be very fertile,
he explained.)
open country like fiends.” Of course, people on fast horses pulled into the lead. They hurried to the land they wantedâonly to find other homesteaders had gotten there sooner. It was pretty obvious these “sooners” had snuck onto the land before it was legally open for settlement. One guy was even found sitting on a claim where the leafy tops of vegetables could clearly be seen sprouting from a garden! (He said he had planted the seeds fifteen minutes before.
The soil must be very fertile,
he explained.)
Before the sun set that evening, settlers had claimed all two million acres. They even built cities overnight. Cities of tents, at least. The next morning the population of Oklahoma City was 10,000 (up from zero the day before). “Never before in the history of the West has so large a number of people been concentrated in one place in so short a time,” reported William Howard.
The government opened other sections of nearby land over the next few years, setting off new land rushes. The Indian Territory soon became the state of Oklahoma.
T
he West was clearly changing forever. In 1890 thousands of Indians made a last, desperate attempt to hold on to their old traditions.
he West was clearly changing forever. In 1890 thousands of Indians made a last, desperate attempt to hold on to their old traditions.
“Suddenly great excitement came into our midst,” remembered Luther Standing Bear. The son of a Lakota chief, he was now teaching English to Lakota children at the Rosebud Reservation in South Dakota. “It broke so suddenly that a great many of the Indians did not know which way to turn,” he said. “It was the craze of a new religion called the âGhost Dance.'”
The Ghost Dance movement was founded by a Paiute Indian in Nevada named Wovoka. By performing this new dance, Wovoka taught, Indians could peacefully bring back their traditional way of life. Buffalo herds would return. White settlers would disappear. Indians would live on a new earth.
“When I first heard of it, I thought it was only foolish talk,” said Black Elk, who was then in his late twenties. “I thought it was only the despair that made people believe.”
Whatever the reason, many did believe. Indians began dancing on reservations from North Dakota all the way to Arizona. By November 1890 the Ghost Dance had taken over life on many reservationsâpeople stopped working on farms or going to school.
Government agents running the reservations were getting nervous. “Indians are dancing in the snow and are wild and crazy,” complained an agent at the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota. “We need protection and we need it now.”
Agents at the Standing Rock Reservation blamed Sitting Bull, claiming he was secretly behind this movement (he wasn't). They wanted him to tell everyone to stop dancing. Sitting Bull refused. He wasn't sure he believed in the dance himself, but he saw no reason to stop others from following whatever religion they chose.
Fearing a huge Indian rebellion, the army started sending soldiers to reservations. At Standing Rock a group of Indians working as policemen were told to arrest Sitting Bull.
“What do you want here?” he asked when the policemen came to take him away.
“You are my prisoner,” said one of the men.
“All right,” Sitting Bull sighed. “Let me put on my clothes and I'll go with you.”
But as the police led Sitting Bull outside, his supporters rushed forward and crowded around.
“You think you are going to take him!” shouted an Indian named Catch-the-Bear. “You shall not do it!” Then to the gathering crowd he called: “Come on now, let us protect our chief!”
Angry people rushed forward, pushing, waving fists, shouting. Catch-the-Bear raised his rifle and shot a policeman. Several policemen fired their own guns into the crowd.
Sitting Bull was hit twice. He fell dead to the ground.
N
ow fearing for their own safety, about four hundred Indians fled from Standing Rock Reservation. They spent the night of December 28, 1890, camped along the banks of Wounded Knee Creek.
ow fearing for their own safety, about four hundred Indians fled from Standing Rock Reservation. They spent the night of December 28, 1890, camped along the banks of Wounded Knee Creek.
Early the next morning a Lakota man named Dewey Beard heard
an army bugle slice through the cold air. “I saw the soldiers mounting their horses and surrounding us,” he remembered. “It was announced that all men should come to the center for a talk.”
an army bugle slice through the cold air. “I saw the soldiers mounting their horses and surrounding us,” he remembered. “It was announced that all men should come to the center for a talk.”
About five hundred American soldiers had the Lakota surrounded, with big guns pointing into camp from all directions. The soldiers demanded that the Lakota give up their weapons. Most quickly gave up the guns. While searching for more weapons, soldiers found a rifle hidden under a blanket worn by a young man named Black Coyote.
Black Coyote wriggled free and pulled out his rifle and held it above his head.
Soldiers yelled at him to drop the gun. They had no way of knowing he was deaf.
“If they had left him alone he was going to put his gun down,” Dewey Beard later said. But soldiers charged Black Coyote. He shot into the air as they grabbed him.
Then there was a huge explosion of gunfire from the soldiers. Lakota warriors tried to fight back, but they had given up most of their weapons.
“We tried to run,” remembered one Lakota woman, “but they shot us like we were buffalo.” In less than an hour of fighting, more than 150 Lakota men, women, and children were killed.
Walking through the Wounded Knee camp that night, an American soldier counted the bodies frozen to the icy ground. “It was a thing to melt the heart of a man, if it was of stone,” he said. Black Elk also saw the twisted bodies lying in bunches. He was haunted by the sight for the rest of his life.
“And I can see that something else died there in the bloody mud, and was buried there in the blizzard. A people's dream died there. It was a beautiful dream.”
Wounded Knee was the last major fight between American soldiers and Native Americans. All the Indian groups of the American West had now been driven onto reservations. The Indian population of the United States stood at 237,000âthe lowest total since the arrival of European settlers. (The Native American population of the United States today is about 2.5 million.)
Black Elk
I
n contrast, the population of the United States zoomed toward 70 million. And more than 17 million Americans were now living west of the Mississippi River.
n contrast, the population of the United States zoomed toward 70 million. And more than 17 million Americans were now living west of the Mississippi River.
The United States government now declared that the West was officially “settled.” Before, there had always been a frontier in the Westâa line separating settled land from unsettled land. But in 1892 the government reported: “There can hardly be said to be a frontier line.”
How do you know the West had really changed forever? Simple: the cowboys started retiring.
“From now on I wasn't a cowpuncher anymore,” said Teddy “Blue” Abbott. The huge open plains the cowboys had used for cattle drives were gone, divided into farms and ranches and towns. And there was no need to drive cattle north now anyway. New railroads ran through Texas and the other southern states, so trains could pick up the cows right there.
Teddy Abbott settled in Montana and found work as a guard at a gold mine. He saved up money, married his sweetheart,
Mary, and then did something truly shocking: he became a farmer! “I took a homestead,” he said, “kept milk cows and raised a garden.”
Mary, and then did something truly shocking: he became a farmer! “I took a homestead,” he said, “kept milk cows and raised a garden.”
Nat Love's story was similar. “With the march of progress came the railroad and no longer were we called upon to follow the long-horned steers,” he said. Love tried working at a big fenced-in ranch, but it just wasn't the same. “I bid farewell to the life which I had followed for over twenty years,” he said. “It was with genuine regret that I left the longhorn Texas cattle and the wild mustangs of the range, but the life had in a great measure lost its attractions and so I decided to quit it and try something else for a while.”
With a new century ahead, Love turned to his attention to new adventures and new challenges. So did the rest of the country.
“I had always worked for big cow outfits and looked down on settlers,” remembered the cowboy-turnedfarmerTeddy “Blue” Abbott
. “Now I was on the other side of the fence, and finding out how damn hard it was to start out poor and get anywheres.” With years of hard work, Teddy and his wife, Mary, did get somewhereâthey built a two-thousandacre farm and ranch, and raised eight children. He always enjoyed meeting up with old cowboys and swapping stories about life on the trail. “Only a few of us left now,” he said in 1938, when he was seventyeight years old. “The rest have left the wagon and gone ahead across the big divide.” Abbott crossed the divide himself a year later.
When the newly independent Republic of Texas held its first presidential election in 1836,Stephen F. Austin
was pretty sure he'd get the gig. “The prosperity of Texas has been the object of my labors,” Austin said. “It has assumed the character of a religion, for the guidance of my thoughts and actions, for fifteen years.” But then, two weeks before the vote, the war hero Sam Houston jumped into the contestâand clobbered Austin (5,119 to 587). Later that year Austin developed pneumonia and died at the age of forty-three. Over time, Texans started to appreciate him moreâthey even named their capital city for him.
After spending eight years as a Crow chief, the African American mountain manJames Beckwourth
turned to other adventures: army scout, wagon driver, trader, hotel owner, guide, gambler, gold miner. He slowed down just long enough to dictate his autobiography,
The Life and Adventures of James P. Beckwourth,
a big hit when it came out in 1856. (Beckwourth was supposed to get half the profits; he never got a dime.) The book is still famous for its priceless descriptions of real life in the Wild West. Beckwourth eventually returned to Crow territory, where he died in 1866, at the age of sixty-eight.
After the defeat of the Lakota,Black Elk
remained a highly respected healer and holy man. Like Sitting Bull, he was offered a job with a traveling Wild West show. “My relatives told me I should stay at home and go on curing people,” he remembered. But he wanted to see a bit of the world. The show took him across the ocean to London, where he performed for Queen Victoria. (“She was little but fat and we liked her,” he recalled.) In 1931, when he was an old man and nearly blind, he told his life story in a book called
Black Elk Speaks
âan all-time classic account of the traditional life and religious beliefs of his people.
Upon returning from the Lewis and Clark Expedition,William Clark
settled in St. Louis, ran a successful fur company, got married, and had five kids. While serving as territorial governor of Missouri, Clark was accused by some of being too friendly to Indians. He responded with an opinion that would be largely ignored in the decades to come (forgive
his spelling and grammar): “It is to be lamented that this deplorable situation of the Indians do not receive more of the humain feelings of this nation.” When Missouri joined the Union in 1820, Clark ran for governor. He lost. He kept busy, though, constantly updating his beloved maps of the West until his death in 1838.
After working for a while at a Nevada newspaper,Samuel Clemens
realized he had a talent for writing funny stories. “It is nothing to be proud of,” he told his brother, “but it is my strongest suit.” Calling himself Mark Twain, he settled far from the Wild West (Connecticut) and wrote some of the most famous books in American literature (
The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn,
and many more). His humor turned bitter as he aged, as you can tell from one of his later jokes: “Reader, suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a member of Congress. But I repeat myself.” When a story spread in 1897 that Twain was on his deathbed, he responded with a classic line: “The reports of my death are greatly exaggerated.” He died for real in 1910, at the age of seventy-five.
Henry “Old Pancake” Comstockand his partners may have discovered a $400 million gold and silver mine, but as usual with major strikes, the real money was made by wealthy investors. Comstock sold his share of the mine for $11,000, invested the money in a store, lost everything, and shot himself. His partners fared no better. One got drunk, fell off his horse, and died of a cracked skull. The other began hearing voices, was sent to a hospital for the insane, and died there. Careful what you wish for.
After George Armstrong Custer's death at Little Bighorn,Elizabeth Custer
packed up, traveled back eastâand found out the whole country was arguing about her husband. Some called Custer a fearless hero who died defending his country. Others said he was a reckless gloryseeker whose thirst for fame had led to disaster. What really stunned Elizabeth was President Ulysses S. Grant's opinion: “I regard Custer's massacre as a sacrifice of troops brought on by Custer himself.” Elizabeth Custer spent the rest of her life (and she lived another fiftyseven years) trying to rescue her husband's reputation. It worked. “General Custer's name was a shining light to all the youth of America,” remembered Theodore Roosevelt, a teenager at the time of Little Bighorn. In more recent years (without his wife around to defend him) historians have been much tougher on Custer.
As a lead builder of the transcontinental railroad,Thomas Durant
had bragged that he would “grab a wad of money from the construction feesâand get out.” And that's exactly what he did. He “got out” just in time too, leaving the Union Pacific shortly before the
New York Sun
ran the huge headline “THE KING OF FRAUDSâCOLOSSAL BRIBERY.” The story exposed the fact that Durant and friends had handed out cash and stock to members of Congress in exchange for laws helping the railroad. Durant shrugged and moved on to a new projectâbuilding a railroad through New York's Adirondack Mountains. He bought up 700,000 acres of wilderness, planning to slice it up and sell it for development as soon as the railroad was done. Luckily for hikers and canoers of the future, he built just sixty miles, then ran out of cash. Today, much of his land is part of Adirondack Park, the largest park in any state except Alaska.
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