New Frontiers: South and West - Document Overview
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The end of the Civil War found Americans confronting two frontiers of opportunity: the devastated South and the untamed West. They wereand arethe most distinctive sections of the country, and both regions exerted a magnetic attraction for adventurers and entrepreneurs. In the postwar South, people set about rebuilding railroads, mills, stores, barns, and homes. In the process of such renewal, a strenuous debate arose over the nature of the "New South." Should it try to recreate the agrarian culture of the antebellum period? Or should it adopt the northern model of a more diversified economy and urban-industrial society? The debate was never settled completely, and as a result both viewpoints competed for attention throughout the last quarter of the nineteenth century. By 1900, the South remained primarily an agricultural region, but it also had developed a far-flung network of textile mills, railroad lines, and manufacturing plants.
African Americans in the former Confederacy often found themselves at the center of the economic and political debate in the "New South." By the end of the century, black leaders themselves were divided over the best course to follow. For his part, Booker T. Washington counseled southern blacks to focus on economic and educational opportunities at the expense of asserting their political and legal rights. Not so, declared W. E. B. Du Bois. He attacked Washington's "accommodationist" strategy and urged blacks to undertake a program of "ceaseless agitation" for political and social equality.
Controversy also swirled around the frenzied renewal of western settlement after the Civil War. During the century after 1865, fourteen new states were carved out of the western territories. To encourage new settlers, the federal government helped finance the construction of four transcontinental railroads, conquered and displaced the Indians, and sold public land at low prices. Propelled by a lust for land and profits, millions of Americans headed west across the Mississippi River to establish homesteads, stake out mining claims, and set up shop in the many "boom towns" cropping up across the Great Plains and in the Far West.
This postwar surge of western migration had many of the romantic qualities so often depicted in novels, films, and television. The varied landscape of prairies, rivers, deserts, and mountains was stunning. And the people who braved incredibly harsh conditions to begin new lives in the West were indeed courageous and tenacious. Cowboys and Indians, outlaws and vigilantes, farmers and herders populated the plains, while miners and trappers led nomadic lives in hills and backwoods.
But these familiar images of western life tell only part of the story. Drudgery and tragedy were as commonplace as adventure and success. Droughts, locusts, disease, tornadoes, and the erratic fluctuations of commody markets made life relentlessly precarious. The people who settled the trans-Mississippi frontier were in fact a diverse lot: they included women as well as men, African Americans, Hispanics, Asians, and European immigrants.
Many of the settlers were also blinded by short-sighted greed and prone to irresponsible behavior. In the process of "removing" the Indians, military forces sometimes exterminated them. By the 1890s there were only 250,000 Native Americans left in the United States. The feverish quest for quick profits also helped fuel a boom/bust economic cycle that injected a chronic instability into the society and politics of the region.
The history of the Old West is thus a much more complicated story than that conveyed through popular cultureor through the accounts of some historians. In 1893 the historian Frederick Jackson Turner announced his so-called frontier thesis. The process of taming and settling an ever-receding frontier, Turner declared, gave American culture its distinctive institutions, values, and energy. The rigors and demands of westward settlement, for example, helped implant in Americans their rugged individualism and hardihood, and such qualities helped reinforce the democratic spirit that set them apart from other peoples. "Up to our day," Turner said, "American history has been in large degree the history of the colonization of the Great West. The existence of an area of free land, its continuous recession, and the advance of American settlement westward, explain American development." He was both right and wrong. The frontier experience explains much about the development of American society, but not all.
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Homestead Act of 1862
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Be it enacted, That any person who is the head of a family, or who has arrived at the age of twenty-one years, and is a citizen of the United States, or who shall have filed his declaration of intention to become such, as required by the naturalization laws of the United States, and who has never borne arms against the United States Government or given aid and comfort to its enemies, shall, from and after the first of January, eighteen hundred and sixty-three, be entitled to enter one quarter-section or a less quantity of unappropriated public lands, upon which said person may have filed a pre-emption claim, or which may, at the time the application is made, be subject to pre-emption at one dollar and twenty-five cents, or less, per acre; or eighty acres or less of such unappropriated lands, at two dollars and fifty cents per acre, to be located in a body, in conformity to the legal subdivisions of the public lands, and after the same shall have been surveyed: Provided, That any person owning or residing on land, may, under the provisions of this act, enter other land lying contiguous to his or her said land, which shall not, with the land so already owned and occupied, exceed in the aggregate one hundred and sixty acres.
Sec. 2. That the person applying for the benefit of this act shall, upon application to the register of the land office in which he or she is about to make such entry, make affidavit before the said register or receiver that he or she is the head of a family, or is twenty-one or more years of age, or shall have performed service in the Army or Navy of the United States, and that he has never borne arms against the Government of the United States or given aid and comfort to its enemies, and that such application is made for his or her exclusive use and benefit, and that said entry is made for the purpose of actual settlement and cultivation, and not, either directly or indirectly, for the use or benefit of any other person or persons whomsoever; and upon filing the said affidavit with the register or receiver, and on payment of ten dollars, he or she shall thereupon be permitted to enter the quantity of land specified: Provided, however, That no certificate shall be given or patent issued therefor until the expiration of five years from the date of such entry; and if, at the expiration of such time, or at any time within two years thereafter, the person making such entryor if he be dead, his widow; or in case of her death, his heirs or devisee; or in case of a widow making such entry, her heirs or devisee, in case of her deathshall prove by two credible witnesses that he, she, or they have resided upon or cultivated the same for the term of five years immediately succeeding the time of filing the affidavit aforesaid, and shall make affidavit that no part of said land has been alienated, and that he has borne true allegiance to the Government of the United States; then, in such case, he, she, or they if at that time a citizen of the United States, shall be entitled to a patent, as in other cases provided for by law: And provided, further, That in case of the death of both father and mother, leaving an infant child or children under twenty-one years of age, the right and fee shall inure to the benefit of said infant child or children; and the executor, administrator, or guardian may, at any time within two years after the death of the surviving parent, and in accordance with the laws of the State in which such children for the time being have their domicile, sell said land for the benefit of said infants, but for no other purpose; and the purchaser shall acquire the absolute title by the purchase, and be entitled to a patent from the United States, on payment of the office fees and sum of money herein specified. . . .
[From
U.S. Statutes at Large, XII, 392ff.]
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Life on Prairie Farms (1893)
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. . . the life of a poor settler on a homestead claim in one of the Dakotas
or Nebraska. Every homesteader must live upon his claim for five years
to perfect his title and to get his patent; so that if there were not the
universal American custom of isolated farm life to stand in the way, no
farm villages would be possible in the first occupancy of a new region
in the West without a change in our land laws. If the country were so thickly
settled that every quarter-section of land (160 acres) had a family upon
it, each family would be half a mile from any neighbor, supposing the houses
to stand in the center of the farms, and in any case the average distance
between them could not be less. But many settlers own 320 acres, and a
few have a square mile of land, 640 acres. Then there are school sections,
belonging to the State, and not occupied at all, and everywhere you find
vacant tracts owned by Eastern speculators or by mortgage companies, to
which former settlers have abandoned their claims, going to newer regions
and leaving their debts and their land behind. Thus the average space separating
the farmsteads is, in fact, always more than half a mile, and many settlers
must go a mile or two to reach a neighbor's house. This condition obtains
not on the frontiers alone, but in fairly well peopled agricultural districts.
If there by any region in the world where the natural gregarious instincts
of mankind should assert itself, that region is our Northwestern prairies,
where a short hot summer is followed by a long cold winter, and where there
is little in the aspect of nature to furnish food for thought. On every
hand the treeless plain stretches away to the horizon line. In summer,
it is checkered with grain fields or carpeted with grass and flowers, and
it is inspiring in its color and vastness; but one mile of it is almost
exactly like another, save where some watercourse nurtures a fringe of
willows and cottonwoods. When the snow covers the ground the prospect is
bleak and dispiriting. No brooks babble under icy armor. There is not bird
life after the wild geese and ducks have passed on their way south. The
silence of death rests on the vast landscape, save when it is swept by
cruel winds that search out every chink and cranny of the buildings, and
drive through each unguarded aperture the dry, powdery snow. In such a
region, you would expect the dwellings to be of substantial construction,
but they are not. The new settler is too poor to build of brick or stone.
He hauls a few loads of lumber from the nearest railway station, and puts
up a frail little house of two, three or four rooms that look as though
the prairie winds would blow it down. Were it not for the invention of
tarred building-paper, the flimsy walls would not keep out the wind and
snow. With this paper, the walls are sheathed under the weatherboards.
The barn is often a nondescript affair of sod walls and straw roof. Lumber
is much too dear to be sued for dooryard fences, and there is no inclosure
about the house. A barbed-wire fence surrounds the barnyard. Rarely are
there any tress, for on the prairies trees grow very slowly and must be
nursed with care to get a start. There is a saying that you must first
get the Indian out of the soil before a tree will grow at all; which means
that some savage quality must be taken from the ground by cultivation.
In this cramped abode, from the windows of which there is nothing more
cheerful in sight than the distant houses of other settlers, just as ugly
and lonely, and stacks of straw and unthreshed grain, the farmer's family
must live. In the summer there is a school for the children, one, two,
or three miles away; but in the winter the distances across the snow-covered
plains are too great for them to travel in severe weather; the schoolhouse
is closed, and there is nothing for them to do but to house themselves
and long for spring. Each family must live mainly to itself, and life,
shut up in the little wooden farmhouses, cannot well be very cheerful.
A drive to the nearest town is almost the only diversion. There the farmers
and their wives gather in the stores and manage to enjoy a little sociability.
The big coal stove gives out a grateful warmth, and there is a pleasant
odor of dried codfish, groceries, and ready-made clothing. The women look
the display of thick cloths and garments, and wish the crop had been better,
so that they could buy some of the things of which they are badly in need.
The men smoke corncob pipes and talk politics. It is a cold drive home
across the wind-swept prairies, but at least they have had a glimpse of
a little broader and more comfortable life than that of the isolated farm.
There are few social events in the life of these prairie farmers to
enliven the monotony of the long winter evenings; no singing-schools, spelling-schools,
debating clubs, or church gatherings. Neighborly calls are infrequent,
because of the long distances which separate the farmhouses, and because,
too, of the lack of homogeneity of the people. They have no common past
to talk about. They were strangers to one another when they arrived in
this new land, and their work and ways have not thrown them much together.
Often the strangeness is intensified by the differences of national origin.
There are Swedes, Norwegians, Germans, French Canadians, and perhaps even
such peculiar people as Finns and Icelanders among the settlers, and the
Americans come from many different States. It is hard to establish any
social bond in such a mixed population, yet one and all need social intercourse,
as the thing most essential to pleasant living, after food, fuel, shelter,
and clothing. An alarming amount of insanity occurs in the new prairie
States among farmers and their wives. In proportion to their numbers, the
Scandinavian settlers furnish the largest contingent to the asylums. The
reason is not far to seek. These people came from cheery little farm villages.
Life in the fatherland was hard and toilsome, but it was not lonesome.
Think for a moment how great the change must be from the white-walled,
red-roofed village of a Norway fjord, with its church and schoolhouse,
its fishing-boats on the blue inlet, and its green mountain walls towering
aloft to snow fields, to an isolated cabin on a Dakota prairie, and say
if it is any wonder that so many Scandinavians lose their mental balance.
[From E. V. Smalley, "The Isolation of Life on Prairie Farms,"
Atlantic Monthly, 72 (1893): 37883.]
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Life in a Mining Camp (1867), Rachel Haskell
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The prospect of gold or silver lured hordes of people to the mining camps and towns that sprung up like mushrooms in California, Nevada, Arizona, Montana, and Idaho. The following selection comes from a month of diary entries made by Mrs. Rachel Haskell, who lived in Aurora, Nevada, where her husband was a tollkeeper, in 1867. It evokes the daily activities and concerns experienced by many in the mining communities of the Far West.
Sunday Mar. 3rd. Got up late as usual these stormy times. Breakfast noon. I washed boys, a good scouring all over, dressed them, then went thru my own toilet. Ella1 read Gulliver's Travels aloud to boys. . . . While Mr. H2 read in kitchen, I lay on sofa and enjoyed myself in said quiet position reading a book . . . till supper was nearly ready. Mr. H. keeps it going on stove. Washed dishes alone. Mr. H. talking in kitchen, Ella playing on piano some pleasant airs. Both ministers sick, so no church today. Came to sitting room, sat on a stool near piano while Ella accompanied songs by the family in chorus. . . . Mr. H., after playing on floor with two younger ones lay on the lounge and read likewise. . . .
Thursday 7th. Woke with dreadful headache, breakfast over felt still worse, pale as a sheet. Had to lay on sofa, could not sleep, tried to play some on piano, but no go. Mr. H. did all he could to relieve me, sat reading Esther or Job in the Bible keeping room quiet. I got some camphor and lay on the bed . . . which stopped the throbbing in my brain; so long since I had a heavy head ache I had forgotten the misery. Kimball and Carlton called in during afternoon. Felt better and got up. Went to table and ate some supper. Mr. Givin came in. Ella and John went to spend evening up town. Had a social chat in front room with the visitors, Maney very cross running from Mr. H. to me. He still reading Job. We ate some pine nuts. . . .
Friday, 8th. Pretty bright morning. Kept the house open for a while. Washed after arranging the shelves more to my liking, put specimens, shells, etc. on them. Washing easy, today. Mr. H. cleaned up stairs. Kept water and fire up and scrubbed kitchen floor, when I got thru. Wrote up this book from Tuesday while waiting supper. Snow falling lightly and tops of hills slightly invisible.
Saturday 9th. Exceedingly deep snow, the deepest of the season. Breakfast over and work was made easy today. Sat down to complete the dear little velvet breeches commenced so long ago. . . . Had a boiled dinner, of cabbage, potatoes and carrots, which were cooked on the front room stove. Ate our supper alone, Mr. H. not coming. Felt very much concerned thereat, worried in mind a good deal. Completed Birdie's suit, put him in them, admiring him as he ran up and down in his first habiliments. Hemmed some ruffling on machine to put on bottoms. Received a present of handsome carving knife and fork, from John D. Papa came home very late with a dreadful headache. He laid on the sofa saying "I never was so sick in his life." Threw up. And I went to sleep with Ella.
Sunday 10th. Almost snowed in, snow very very deep. 2 feet. John D. started home; gave me a nice, large platter to go with carving knife and fork, and side-board, both of which he bought of Mrs. Cooper. We were very very sorry to part with him having had a most brotherly visit of several weeks. The snow was so heavy we feared it would crack the kitchen roof, as it groaned once or twice, which made us all scoot. Papa ascended the roof and removed the weight. I washed Dudley and Harry and they went to morning service single file through the snow with their Father. Washed up the floor which looked rather soiled, while Ella . . . washed and dressed Birdie and Manie. . . . Pop and boys home in good season. I made plum pies and cunning little tarts, latter which pleased the five children exceedingly. Enjoyed our Sunday dinner. The children did not go to sabbath school. Donned my usual short grey to commence my rest just at dusk. Papa went to town, promising to come back soon with peanuts. I read aloud to Dudley and Harry. . . . Boys enjoyed their stories exceedingly. Mr. H returned in good season, peanuts all safe which we enjoyed, with the addition of a few pines. Finis to Sunday.
Monday 11th. Sprinkled last week clothes for ironing, made yeast. Ella ironed. . . . Howcomfortable and cozy the sitting room did look this evening by twilight. The shelves laden with books, specimens, minerals, shells. The Piano, the Sewing Machine, comfortable sofa and easy chair, with healthy, happy, prattling . . . little children. . . . We heard a most piteous wail of wind that seemed like a groan of the Spheres or the wail of a lost soul. Twice or thrice repeated, then died away into a perfect calm. We went to bed without Mr. H. who did not return till after 12 o'clock, ostensibly waiting for the mail.
Sat. 16th. Scrubbed kitchen again which looked terrific by this morning. Made bread, and set doughnutsall tardy in rising. Sat in entry and read the Dodge Club in Harper3, Ella sewed some on machine while I sat at back window in sitting room enjoying the view and sewing Birdie's velvet pants which proved too short in legs. . . . Waited supper on Mr. H. who did not come. . . . Passed a pleasant evening. Mr. R. brot us a nice mince pie, had quite a talk with him. Mr. Chapin recd two pieces of music, both of which he presented to us, "What are the wild waves saying" and "Bonnie Eloise." Also a pack of author cards to the children which we played with much zest. After our callers left we sat up quite late children and all, warmed our mince pie and enjoyed eating it much. . . . Mr. H. did not come home all night. But I thought of other things. Ella's dress I must make for Odd fellows ball and so forth so I experienced no particular harassment.
Sunday 17th. Waked with rather a forlorn, angry feeling at heart. No matches. Dudley started up town to get them and see where papa was. Met him coming home. Had a sharp talk on these growing peccadillos, but went to church together. How wearied and haggard he looked. Small turn out of ladies at Church. Snowy path to church. Had to fry my cakes after return. Mr. H. lay down and slept till dark, supper over, Mr. Medley spent evening and I read my book till my eyes grew heavy and I threw myself on the bed and had good sleep. Mr. H. seems much more affectionate.
Monday 18th. Everything to arrange in cupboard and kitchen. Scrubbed floor and made every thing look neat. Read Hawthorne while resting. Ella making Maney a frock of some old plaid. Put on beans. Had liver and onion, pickles Mr. H brot down. After supper Mr. H. read near the stove in kitchen while I cut out flannel shirt for Dudley and sewed the seams. Ella writing some in her never ending style. Ball up town tonight, lot of boys came down to skating pond, our Dud got out of bed and joined them. Maney cross; could not sew or read so went to bed. Boys staid out long time. We did not hear them come in, but they were disgusted with the big boys who drank liquor from a bottle.
Tuesday 26th. Birdie was dreadfully croupy last night. His breathing intensely labored. Put a wet cloth on his chest which did not relieve him so promptly as it does generally. It was a great drain on my sympathy all the hours of the night. He talked excitedly too a great deal. My eyes were shut, and so very sore when I waked. This eternal covering of snow which continually meets the gaze so glittering must prove hurtful to an organ whose natural color should be green to look upon. . . .
Thursday 28th. Got up late, later than usual, which is not necessary. Disturbed Mr. H. by preparing for washing said weekly business being repugnant to his nerves. Swept rooms first and got thro well enough with the Herculean task which women all dread, but which is a diversion to me, and proceeded to getting supper. Made oyster soup which children hailed as glorious. Mr. H. ate his sour with vinegar. I washed dishes to let Ella get ready to attend of "Master Mason's daughter," up town. Our guest of previous evening Mr. Mitchener came for her. I never saw her looking prettier than when she came in soon ready to start, expectation in her countenance health in her cheek and nobleness in her manner. Left to ourselves had a quiet evening. . . .
Sat. 30th. Mr. H. gathered wood off the hills much to his satisfaction, boys accompanying him. Squaws engaged in same business packing off loads on their backs. Scrubbed kitchen and chairs. I sewed at skirt of Ella's dress. Had cabbage boiled for supper and bacon. Mr. H. washed entry and stairs down, [and he was]4 rather surly till supper was over when he beamed forth a little. Maney so cross and fretful and my eyes so painful I took her to bed quite early. . . .
1. A friend. (Return to text)
2. Rachel Haskell's husband. (Return to text)
3. A popular magazine. (Return to text)
4. Editorial insertion. (Return to text)
[From Richard Lillard, ed., "A Literate Woman in the Mines: The Diary of Rachel Haskell,"
Mississippi Valley Historical Review 21 (June 1944):8198.]
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Boley: A Negro Town in the American West (1908)
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The community of Boley, in the Creek Nation of Indian Territory, or what is now Oklahoma, was one of thirty black towns founded in the West after the Civil War and settled by immigrants from the South and Middle West. Blacks first arrived in Oklahoma as the slaves of Cherokees and Creeks. The Indians had been displaced from the Carolinas and Georgia during the 1830s and forced to relocate by foot along the "Trail of Tears" to new lands in Oklahoma. In 1908, a year after Oklahoma was granted statehood, Booker T. Washington described the town's development.
The large proportions of the northward and westward movement of the negro population recall the Kansas exodus of thirty years ago, when within a few months more than forty thousand helpless and destitute negroes from the country districts of Arkansas and Mississippi poured into eastern Kansas in search of "better homes, larger opportunities, and kindlier treatment."
It is a striking evidence of the progress made in thirty years that the present northward and westward movement of the negro people has brought into these new lands, not a helpless and ignorant horde of black people--but land-seekers and home-builders, men who have come prepared to build up the country. In the thirty years since the Kansas exodus the southern negroes have learned to build schools, to establish banks and conduct newspapers. They have recovered something of the knack for trade that their foreparents in Africa were famous for. They have learned through their churches and their secret orders the art of corporate and united action. This experience has enabled them to set up and maintain in a raw western community, numbering 2,500, an orderly and self-respecting government.
In the fall of 1905 I spent a week in the Territories of Oklahoma and Indian Territory. During the course of my visit I had an opportunity for the first time to see the three races--the negro, the Indian, and the white man--living side by side, each in sufficient numbers to make their influence felt in the communities of which they were a part, and in the Territory as a whole. . . .
One cannot escape the impression, in traveling through Indian Territory, that the Indians, who own practically all the lands, and until recently had the local government largely in their own hands, are to a very large extent regarded by the white settlers, who are rapidly filling up the country, as almost a negligible quantity. To such an extent is this true that the Constitution of Oklahoma, as I understand it, takes no account of the Indians in drawing its distinctions among the races. For the Constitution there exist only the negro and the white man. The reason seems to be that the Indians have either receded--"gone back," as the saying in that region is on the advance of the white race, or they have intermarried with and become absorbed with it. Indeed, so rapidly has this intermarriage of the two races gone on, and so great has been the demand for Indian
wives, that in some of the Nations, I was informed, the price of marriage licenses has gone as high as $1,000.
The negroes, immigrants to Indian Territory, have not, however, "gone back." One sees them everywhere, working side by side with white men. They have their banks, business enterprises, schools, and churches. There are still, I am told, among the "natives" some negroes who cannot speak the English language, and who have been so thoroughly bred in the customs of the Indians that they have remained among the hills with the tribes by whom they were adopted. But, as a rule, the negro natives do not shun the white man and his civilization, but, on the contrary, rather seek it, and enter, with the negro immigrants, into competition with the white man for its benefits.
This fact was illustrated by another familiar local expression. In reply to my inquiries in regard to the little towns through which we passed, I often had occasion to notice the expression, "Yes, so and so? Well, that is a 'white town.'" Or again, "So and so, that's colored."
I learned upon inquiry that there were a considerable number of communities throughout the Territory where an effort had been made to exclude negro settlers. To this the negroes had replied by starting other communities in which no white man was allowed to live. For instance, the thriving little city of Wilitka, I was informed, was a white man's town until it got the oil mills. Then they needed laborers, and brought in the negroes. There are a number of other little communities--Clairview, Wildcat, Grayson, and Taft--which were sometimes referred to as "colored towns," but I learned that in their cases the expression meant merely that these towns had started as negro communities or that there were large numbers of negroes there, and that negro immigrants were wanted. But among these various communities there was one of which I heard more than the others. This was the town of Boley, where, it is said, no white man has ever let the sun go down upon him.
In 1905, when I visited Indian Territory, Boley was little more than a name. It was started in 1903. At the present time it is a thriving town of 2,500 inhabitants, with two banks, two cotton gins, a newspaper, a hotel, and a "college," the Creek-Seminole College and Agricultural Institute.
There is a story told in regard to the way in which the town of Boley was started, which, even if it is not wholly true as to the details, is at least characteristic, and illustrates the temper of the people in that region.
One spring day, four years ago, a number of gentlemen were discussing, at Wilitka, the race question. The point at issue was the capability of the negro for self-government. One of the gentlemen, who happened to be connected with the Fort Smith Railway, maintained that if the negroes were given a fair chance they would prove themselves as capable of self-government as any other people of the same degree of culture and education. He asserted that they had never had a fair chance. The other gentlemen naturally asserted the contrary. The result of the argument was Boley. Just at that time a number of other town sites were being laid out along the railway which connects Guthrie, Oklahoma, with Fort Smith, Arkansas. It was, it is said, to put the capability of the negro for self-government to the test that in August, 1903, seventy-two miles east of Guthrie, the site of the new negro town was established. It was called Boley, after the man who built that section of the railway. A negro town-site agent, T. M. Haynes, who is at present connected with the Farmers' and Merchants' Bank, was made Town-site Agent, and the purpose to establish a town which should be exclusively controlled by negroes was widely advertised all over the Southwest.
Boley, although built on the railway, is still on the edge of civilization. You can still hear on summer nights, I am told, the wild notes of the Indian drums and the shrill cries of the Indian dancers among the hills beyond the settlement. The outlaws that formerly infested the country have not wholly disappeared. Dick Shafer, the first town marshal of Boley, was killed in a duel with a horse thief, whom he in turn shot and killed, after falling, mortally wounded, from his horse. The horse thief was a white man.
There is no liquor sold in Boley, or any part of the Territory, but the "natives" go down to Prague, across the Oklahoma border, ten miles away, and then come back and occasionally "shoot up" the town. That was a favorite pastime, a few years ago, among the "natives" around Boley. The first case that came up before the mayor for trial was that of a young "native" charged with "shooting up" a meeting in a church. But, on the whole, order in the community has been maintained. It is said that during the past two years not a single arrest has been made among the citizens. The reason is that the majority of these negro settlers have come there with the definite intention of getting a home and building up a community where they can, as they say, be "free." What this expression means is pretty well shown by the case of C. W. Perry, who came from Marshall, Texas. Perry had learned the trade of a machinist and had worked in the railway machine shops until the white machinists struck and made it so uncomfortable that the negro machinists went out. Then he went on the railway as brakeman, where he worked for fifteen years. He owned his own home and was well respected, so much so that when it became known that he intended to leave, several of the county commissioners called on him. "Why are you going away?" they asked; "you have your home here among us. We know you and you know us. We are behind you and will protect you."
"Well," he replied, "I have always had an ambition to do something for myself I don't want always to be led. I want to do a little leading."
Other immigrants, like Mr. T. R. Ringe, the mayor, who was born a slave in Kentucky, and Mr. E. L. Lugrande, one of the principal stockholders in the new bank, came out in the new country, like so many of the white settlers, merely to get land. Mr. Lugrande came from Denton County, Texas, where he had 58 acres of land. He had purchased this land some years ago for four and five dollars the acre. He sold it for fifty dollars an acre, and, coming to Boley, he purchased a tract of land just outside of town and began selling town lots. Now a large part of his acreage is in the center of the town.
Mr. D. J. Turner, who owns a drugstore and has an interest in the Farmers' and Merchants' Bank, came to Indian Territory as a boy, and has grown up among the Indians, to whom he is in a certain way related, since he married an Indian girl and in that way got a section of land. Mr. Turner remembers the days when everyone in this section of the Territory lived a half-savage life, cultivating a little corn and killing a wild hog or a beef when they wanted meat. And he has seen the rapid change, not only in the country, but in the people, since the tide of immigration turned this way. The negro immigration from the South, he says, has been a particularly helpful influence upon the "native" negroes, who are beginning now to cultivate their lands in a way which they never thought of doing a few years ago.
A large proportion of the settlers of Boley are farmers from Texas, Arkansas, and Mississippi. But the desire for western lands has drawn into the community not only farmers, but doctors, lawyers, and craftsmen of all kinds. The fame of the town has also brought, no doubt, a certain proportion of the drifting population. But behind all other attractions of the new colony is the belief that here negroes would find greater opportunities and more freedom of action than they have been able to find in the older communities North and South.
Boley, like the other negro towns that have sprung up in other parts of the country, represents a dawning race consciousness, a wholesome desire to do something to make the race respected; something which shall demonstrate the right of the negro, not merely as an individual, but as a race, to have a worthy and permanent place in the civilization that the American people are creating.
In short, Boley is another chapter in the long struggle of the negro for moral, industrial, and political freedom.
[From Booker T. Washington, "Boley: A Negro Town in the West,"
The Outlook (4 January 1908):2831.]
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An Indian's Perspective, Chief Joseph
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Chief Joseph was the heroic leader of a large band of Nez Percé (a misnomer, meaning "pierced noses") who had been converted to Christianity in the early nineteenth century. He was born in 1840 in the Wallowa valley of Oregon. Like many other tribes, the Nez Percé negotiated treaties with the American government, only to see the treaties violated, tensions erupt, and conflict ensue. In 1877, after mont of ferocious fighting and a spectacular retreat across Idaho and Montana, Chief Joseph's band of some 400 Indians surrendered with the understanding that they would be allowed to return home. Instead, they were taken first to Kansas and then to what is now Oklahoma. Joseph thereafter made repeated appeals to the federal government to let his people return to their native region; he visited Washington, D.C. in 1879 to present his grievances against the federal government to President Rutherford B. Hayes. But it was not until 1885 that he and several others were relocated to Washington state, where he died in 1904.
White men found gold in the mountains around the land of the Winding Water. They stole a great many horses from us and we could not get them back because we were Indians. The white men told lies for each other. They drove off a great many of our cattle. Some white men branded our young cattle so they could claim them. We had no friends who would plead our cause before the law councils. It seemed to me that some of the white men in Wallowa were doing these things on purpose to get up a war. They knew we were not strong enough to fight them. I labored hard to avoid trouble and bloodshed.
We gave up some of our country to the white men, thinking that then we could have peace. We were mistaken. The white men would not let us alone. We could have avenged our wrongs many times, but we did not. Whenever the Government has asked for help against other Indians we have never refused. When the white men were few and we were strong we could have killed them off, but the Nez Perce wishes to live at peace. . . .
We have had a few good friends among the white men, and they have always advised my people to bear these taunts without fighting. Our young men are quick tempered and I have had great trouble in keeping them from doing rash things. I have carried a heavy load on my back ever since I was a boy. I learned then that we were but few while the white men were many, and that we could not hold our own with them. We were like deer. They were like grizzly bears. We had a small country. Their country was large. We were contented to let things remain as the Great Spirit Chief made them. They were not; and would change the mountains and rivers if they did not suit them.
Tell General Howard that I know his heart.1 What he told me before I have in my heart. I am tired of fighting. Our chiefs are killed. . . . The old men are all dead. . . . It is cold and we have no blankets. The little children are freezing to death. My peoplesome of them have run away to the hills and have no blankets and no food. No one knows where they areperhaps freezing to death. I want to have time to look for my children and see how many of them I can find. Maybe I shall find them among the dead. Hear me, my chiefs, my heart is sick and sad. From where the sun now stands I will fight no more against the white man.
At last I was granted permission to come to Washington and bring my friend Yellow Bull and our interpreter with me.2 I am glad I came. I have shaken hands with a good many friends, but there are some things I want to know which no one seems able to explain. I cannot understand how the Government sends a man out to fight us, as it did General Miles, and then breaks his word. Such a government has something wrong about it. . . .
I have heard talk and talk but nothing is done. Good words do not last long unless they amount to something. Words do not pay for my dead people. They do not pay for my country now overrun by white men. They do not protect my father's grave. They do not pay for my horses and cattle. Good words do not give me back my children. Good words will not make good the promise of your war chief, General Miles. Good words will not give my people a home where they can live in peace and take care of themselves. I am tired of talk that comes to nothing. It makes my heart sick when I remember all the good words and all the broken promises. There has been too much talking by men who had no right to talk. Too many misinterpretations have been made; too many misunderstandings have come up between the white men and the Indians. . . .
I know that my race must change. We cannot hold our own with the white men as we are. We only ask an even chance to live as other men live. We ask to be recognized as men. We ask that the same law shall work alike on all men. If an Indian breaks the law, punish him by the law. If a white man breaks the law, punish him also.
Let me be a free man, free to travel, free to stop, free to work, free to trade where I choose, free to choose my own teachers, free to follow the religion of my fathers, free to talk, think and act for myselfand I will obey every law or submit to the penalty.
Whenever the white man treats the Indian as they treat each other then we shall have no more wars. We shall be all alikebrothers of one father and mother, with one sky above us and one country around us and one government for all. Then the Great Spirit Chief who rules above will smile upon this land and send rain to wash out the bloody spots made by brothers' hands upon the face of the earth. For this time the Indian race is waiting and praying. I hope no more groans of wounded men and women will ever go to the ear of the Great Spirit Chief above, and that all people may be one people.
1. This section refers to events after Chief Joseph's surrender in 1877.
2. This section refers to Chief Joseph's visit to Washington, D.C., 1879.
[From Chester Anders Fee, Chief Joseph: The Biography of a Great Indian (New York: Wilson-Erickson, 1936), pp. 78-79, 262-63, 281-83.]
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