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James Cox - My Native Land
excitement and uproar was kept up long after night-fall. In their feverish anxiety to retain possession of
the homes for which they had waited and raced, hundreds of men stayed up all night to continue the work
of hut building, knowing that nothing would help them so much in pressing their claims for a title as
evidence of work on bona fide improvements. They kept on day after day, and, late in the season as it
was, many of the newcomers raised a good crop that year.
The opening of other sections of the old Indian Territory, now included in Oklahoma, took place two or
three years later, when the scenes we have briefly described were repeated. To-day, Oklahoma extends
right up to the southern Kansas line, and the Cherokee Strip, on whose rich blue grass hundreds of
thousands of cattle have been fattened, is now a settled country, with at least four families to every
square mile, and with a number of thriving towns and even large cities. At the present time the question
of Statehood for the youngest of our Territories is being actively debated. No one disputes the fact that
the population and wealth is large enough to justify the step, and the only question at issue is whether the
whole of the Indian Territory should be included in the new State, or whether the lands of the so-called
civilized tribes should be excluded.
The lawlessness which has prevailed in some portions of the Indian Territory is held to be a strong
argument in favor of opening up all the lands for settlement. At present the Indians own immense tracts
of land under very peculiar conditions. A large number of white men, many of them respectable citizens,
and many of them outlaws and refugees from justice, have married fair Cherokee, Choctaw and Creek
girls, and these men, while not recognized by the heads of the tribes, are able to draw from the
Government, in the names of their wives, the large sums of money from time to time distributed.
Advocates of Statehood favor the allotment to each Indian of his share of the land, and the purchase by
the Government of the immense residue, which could then be opened for settlement.
Until this question is settled, the anomaly will continue of civilization and the reverse existing side by
side. Some of the Indians have assumed the manners, dress, virtues and vices of their white neighbors, in
which case they have generally dropped their old names and assumed something reasonable in their
place. But many of the red men who adhere to tradition, and who object to innovation, still stick to the
names given them in their boyhood. Thus, in traveling across the Indian Territory, Indians with such
names as "Hears-Something-Everywhere," "Knows-Where-He-Walks," "Bear-in-the-Cloud,"
"Goose-Over-the-Hill," "Shell-on-the-Neck," "Sorrel Horse," "White Fox,"
"Strikes-on-the-Top-of-the-Head," and other equally far-fetched and ridiculous terms and cognomens.
Every one has heard of Chief "Rain-in-the-Face," a characteristic Indian, whose virtues and vices have
both been greatly exaggerated from time to time. A picture is given of this representative of a rapidly
decaying race, and of the favorite pony upon which he has ridden thousands of miles, and which in its
early years possessed powers of endurance far beyond what any one who has resided in countries
removed from Indian settlements can have any idea or conception of.
CHAPTER VII. COWBOYS - REAL AND IDEAL.
A Much Maligned Class - The Cowboy as he Is, and as he is Supposed to be - Prairie Fever and how it is
Cured - Life on the Ranch Thirty Years Ago and Now - Singular Fashions and Changes of Costume -
Troubles Encountered by would-be Bad Men.
Among the thoroughly American types of humanity, none is more striking or unique than the cowboy.
This master of horsemanship and subduer of wild and even dangerous cattle, has been described in so
many ways that a great difference of opinion exists as to what he was, and what he is. We give a picture
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