The Blacks in Oklahoma, Part III

December 17, 2015June 4, 2023 ~ Blue Cereal

It pains me to say so, but we really need to wrap this one up.

I’ve been wandering through “The Blacks in Oklahoma,” from The New York Times, April 9, 1891. If you haven’t read Part I and Part II, well… I mean, you did notice this is called ‘Part III’, right?

The unnamed author has already set us up once, responding to rumors that black settlers were becoming a drain on their communities and – by implication – the hard working white citizens in the territory, by informing us that the opposite seemed to be the case everywhere HE went.

Having covered a touch of the past and some key features of the present, he’s about to conclude – logically enough – by considering the future. He starts by reminding us that white people are at best delusional, and at worst notorious fabricators – especially the politicians.

The Hon. David Harvey, delegate to Congress from Oklahoma, said to THE TIMES correspondent that the blacks were decreasing in Oklahoma and that they could not find an abiding place there. The observation made during the trip just finished will not verify his statements.

What a gentle way to phrase “liar, liar, pants on fire!”

In his own city – Oklahoma City – according to his statement, there were not over 100 negroes of all ages and kinds. A careful personal count revealed the existence of 157 families, averaging 4 to each family. He asserted that there were not more than four dozen negroes in Guthrie, while, in fact, there are at least 300 in the city.

Last time this reporter laid on the statistics, he was setting us up for a mid-article twist. We should be ready for wherever he’s going this time as well.

Mr. Harvey was especially positive that the black-jack country could not contain over 1,000 negroes, when the returns of the last election show that Mr. Harvey received at least 1,700 negro votes.

Again with the diplomatic approach.

I think this could just as easily have said, “He knows darn well that he’s full of $#%* because whatever else he does or doesn’t care about, he KNOWS his own electoral results!”

He condemns all allusion to the black strength in that Territory, believing that the importation of blacks only adds to the distress possibly existing there, and yet the blacks are the only ones of a mixed population self-sustaining in a Territory where the majority of the inhabitants so far have been living off of each other, gradually wasting their capital, and will do so until agriculture begins to be productive of results.

Thus revisiting the impact point made in the first half of the piece – despite claims to the contrary, the black settlers were the only ones NOT adding to “the distress.” Note how subtly the language employed here suggests a certain defensiveness – maybe even hostility – on the part of Mr. Harvey.

The cities are owned principally by speculators. They would be creditable to an older country, showing the indomitable energy and faith of their founders, as well as exemplifying their hopes in the future of Oklahoma.

Is there an implied ‘but…’ here?

In the meantime, almost every train brings in negroes from the South, who remain. Agents from Georgia and Arkansas have in vain sought to induce some of these blacks to return as laborers. They will not go. They send glowing accounts back to their friends of the new land, and the stream of immigrants constantly increases.

However difficult conditions in the new Territory, they apparently had nothing on the Old South. If you teach ‘push-pull’ factors in your classroom, here’s a prime example – plenty to drive a group of people OUT of one place; plenty to draw them IN to another.

So far there has been but little trouble; what the future may bring nobody even pretends to guess. In fact, nobody will not think of it, except the blacks themselves. The latter fondly cherish the idea that they may possibly found here a State in which they will predominate and have the controlling power.

Oh the possibilities! Surely most resisted the temptation to give hope too much leeway. History would insist that under no circumstances would that EVER be allowed to happen (see Part II).

Here comes the wrap-up. Stay with me now – this is a good one.

See, one of the things I love about humor and tone in a well-written piece is how much impact it gives the underlying message – the ‘serious’ parts – when they arrive. I have little use for droopy drama, but when the Guardians of the Galaxy resolve to sacrifice themselves to try to do one right thing, or Bill Murray realizes the “true” meaning of Christmas… snot’n’sobs. Every time.

If I were an English teacher, we’d have a fancy word for this use of tone and structure, and examples involving obtuse essays by dead Englishmen. But HISTORY teacher = movies movies movies.

The war of races in Oklahoma is sure to come, but it will not be fought with guns and knives. The weapons will be the plow and the hoe, which will be wielded by each race upon its own lands. It remains to be seen whether the hot sun of Oklahoma will favor the black cuticle of the cotton and tobacco grower or the white skin of the corn and wheat raiser.

*pause*

That’s it. That’s the conclusion.

I’ve read this numerous times, and I’m convinced the author fully expects the black settlers in Oklahoma to prevail – or to at least hold their own. Maybe he’s more concerned with dramatic effect than substance, but I don’t think it’s just that. I think he’s being idealistic.

Like most of us, his own experiences and assumptions about how the world works color his optimism. Inherent in that closing paragraph is the conviction that hard work, grit, and the human spirit determine winners and losers in the end. Helen Churchill Condee had the same assumptions when she wrote primarily of white homesteading.

That’s the American Dream – or it was, for a few centuries. It’s a bedrock of conservative social and political thinking – you get out of life what you put into it. Work hard, stay in school, live the dream – everyone may not start with the same advantages, but the overall system works the same for everyone.

The Black experience – in Oklahoma or anywhere else – didn’t usually hold that to be true. Much like the American Indians they were replacing, the terms of the deal kept changing based on what best served white predominance. They changed for individual farmers who found some success, and they changed for communities who prospered just a little too much.

The most glaring example exploded a short thirty years later in Greenwood, as white citizens of Tulsa burned down Black Tulsa, killed hundreds of innocents, and took their stuff home as presents for their wives and kids. The war of races become violently overt, fought with guns and knives.

But even when the mobs aren’t in the street, is it possible that the underlying system has always been there? How much would be different if it weren’t shaping policies and attitudes today?

I don’t want to sound negative, but a doctor unwilling to discuss a possible diagnosis with his patient just because he doesn’t want to be a downer isn’t a very honest doctor. Maybe we don’t like to think about such things because we’re enjoying our little plot of land, knowing we’ve worked hard, taken a few chances, and caught a few breaks along the way. Maybe it’s easier to condemn those who threaten our paradigm than to question our comfort.

Or perhaps at some point human nature dramatically changed, the system began to work equitably, and everyone should just be glad all the descendents of those who first claimed those best lands from the less-worthy (by nature of their color or culture) just happen to be the most honest, hard-working folks today.

You know, so no one has to adjust their social, political, or economic standing too much. Because that would be SO un-American.

Just make sure you don’t think it too clearly or ever say to yourself out loud what your forebears carried as a matter of fundamental faith – that you are where you are because that’s exactly how things were set up to be. Because the universe has decreed it your “birthright.”

RELATED POST: The Blacks in Oklahoma, Part I

RELATED POST: The Blacks in Oklahoma, Part II

RELATED POSTS: A Chance in Oklahoma, Parts I – II

RELATED POSTS: Boomers & Sooners, Parts I – V

The Blacks in Oklahoma, Part II

December 16, 2015June 4, 2023 ~ Blue Cereal

If you haven’t read Part I of this post, first of all let me say SHAME ON YOU! How can you let crucial learnifying SLIP like that? Second of all, I respectfully suggest you start there for, you know, context and stuff.

I was waxing history-nerdish over a column titled “The Blacks in Oklahoma,” published in The New York Times on April 9, 1891. It’s historically significant, and rhetorically rich. The reporter is addressing rumors that black homesteaders had been flowing into the recently opened territory without resources or a plan, and had become a drain on the community and perhaps a danger to others.

Imagine a time in which “others” were automatically treated with such suspicion and accusation. Oh, the good ol’ days…

Many have gone to that territory with nothing except the rags they wore, but they have never become public charges. They have been cared for by persons of their own race until they were in such condition that they could help themselves and help others.

It’s not unusual even today for immigrant groups (these weren’t technically ‘immigrants’ so much as ‘migrants,’ but the idea is the same) to settle in clusters where they can mutually support and assist one another. Some of this may be defensive, but it has an important proactive function as well.

Don’t scoff – you’d do it too if you were moving to a new world.

At this time there are eight families crowded into an old (over one year is “old” in that country) storeroom, which aggregates forty-five people. There they sit day after day, waiting until they can be scattered and settled temporarily upon some of their race’s claims. They have their rages and their bundles of household goods and probably $50 would prove a bonanza to the entire outfit. They are fed by their more fortunate brothers, and some way they will be kept alive until Summer, when they will show that they are self-sustaining, for they will work and exist upon almost nothing.

I wonder if the assertive confidence expressed here reflects the mindset of his subjects, or the convictions of the author himself? That would make an interesting document analysis activity.

I have some idea what it’s like to be poor, but I lack a real appreciation for the sort of soul-crippling poverty described here. Most of us couldn’t even imagine. And yet…

Humiliating as they confession must be and is, the appeals for aid coming from Oklahoma do not come from the negroes, but from the whites. They exemplify the workings of the co-operative plan, as on claims may be found two, four, and sometimes eight families, all working together and often living together, awaiting the time when more lands will be opened for settlement, when the surplus expect to find claims for themselves.

If there’s a sense of entitlement present, it makes sense it would come from those running to claim land promised to others for as long as the sun shines and the grass grows and so forth. There was little guilt about betraying our national oaths yet again, largely because of a deep conviction that white guys in some way DESERVED this in a way others could not.

Is it such a leap to realize some of those same claimants would ask for help while they wait for the rest of WHAT THEY DESERVE to become available?

Twelve miles northeast of Guthrie, on the eastern border of Oklahoma, was found the little “city” of Langston, the inspiration of E.P. McCabe, the only colored State officer Kansas ever had, who is now Treasurer of Guthrie County. McCabe proposes to establish at Langston a distinctively negro city, and has for months, through colonization societies, been working in the Southern States to secure a population for this new black Mecca.
He has secured a number of families and has sold many lots. Some thirty dwelling houses and a small store comprise the nucleus of what the negroes hope to make a great city. There are nearly two hundred persons already there, and not a white face is to be found in the place.
Black carpenters were at work on a dozen new houses in course of erection, while masons, bricklayers, and other mechanics were making preparations for their future work. They have a black doctor, a black preacher, and a black school teacher, the latter presiding in an unpretentious little building already dignified by being called “the academy.” Adjoining the town site eighty-three acres of land have been broken up, and will this year be used as a co-operative garden by the entire colony.

McCabe is a big deal in Oklahoma history. He was the driving force behind much of the territory’s black settlement in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. His goal of an exclusively ‘black state’ was within reach for a time. It could have happened.

White people, of course, freaked out at the possibility. Imagine if it had failed – all those poor, angry black folks concentrated in one place? What might they do?

Worse, imagine if it had succeeded? How many centuries of American history would have to be re-examined if it turned out black folks were perfectly capable of running their own lives and communities after all? What would that say about…?

Oh yeah – not gonna let that happen. No State For You!

When asked what they were going to live on until something was raised, the general reply was that they “did not come here as paupers,” and that they had brought some money enough with them to live on for some time.
The principal object in establishing this town on the eastern border was to be near the lands of the Iowas, which are expected to be open to settlement before Fall. When these lands are opened Langston will be the supply depot for all of the black race, and there will be repeated the experiment, already a success, that was made in the black-jack country in the northwest part of the Territory, but under much more favorable circumstances, as the new town in situation in a much more productive country.

Black settlers tended to gather in areas with the least desirable farm land, and the least convenient access. While this seems to have occasionally been a result of pre-opening regulations, it was primarily a strategic move on the part of the black community.

It didn’t take much extrapolation to suspect that land recently seized from red men would be unlikely to stay in the hands of black men if desired by white men. So, pick areas white people wouldn’t want. Sure – it would be harder to grow essential crops, and to provide other sustenance… but what else was new?

Apparently some were now hoping to grab some land a bit further east, where conditions weren’t QUITE so onerous.

Therein lies the inevitable tension for citizens of color, then OR now. Very real opportunity. Very real progress. Open doors and flashing arrows pointing the way towards very real dreams.

And yet… at any time, those rules can change. They change if you’re not successful enough in the game, and they change even more dramatically if you are. You won’t give up, and you don’t want to lose, you have to be careful how much you win.

I insist to my students that whatever else Oklahoma is, its history is rather unique among the fifty states. At the same time, our past repeatedly reflects larger truths about the nation as a whole. We study Oklahoma history not because we’re unique (even if we are), but because of the light it sheds on the bigger picture.

We’re like a historical funhouse mirror collection. Why can’t THAT be on our license plates?

We’ll conclude in Part III – I promise.

RELATED POST: The Blacks in Oklahoma, Part I

RELATED POST: The Blacks in Oklahoma, Part III

RELATED POSTS: A Chance In Oklahoma, Parts I & II

RELATED POSTS: Boomers & Sooners, Parts I – V

The Blacks in Oklahoma, Part I

December 16, 2015June 4, 2023 ~ Blue Cereal ~ 1 Comment

I’ve been on a bit of a primary-sources-related-to-Oklahoma spree lately. Haven’t we all, at one time or another?

Many of them are interesting, most are informative, and a few contain information which is simply incorrect, however passionately delivered. There are a handful, though, which are simply a joy to read – repeatedly!

Er… for me, at least. As I’ve said before, my life isn’t what you might call “rip-roaring.”

THE BLACKS IN OKLAHOMA – FLOCKING TO THE TERRITORY IN LARGE NUMBERS
The New York Times – April 9, 1891

It had been nearly two years since the first land run opened the ‘Unassigned Lands’ in what was becoming increasingly thought of as simply ‘Oklahoma’. A second opening was anticipated in a few months, and people up north were naturally curious how things were going down there in wild country.

Unlike today, when accuracy and perspective are editorial priorities as a matter of professionalism and respect, it wasn’t unusual in the late 19th century for stories about crazy events or bizarre behavior to capture the public imagination far more than the tedium of most real life. Sometimes news outlets even exaggerated a bit to keep readers entertained.

Of particular interest were stories feeding national preconceptions about race or culture. Were homesteaders at this late stage really such dirty, uneducated folks? Were Indians truly savages, or more like simple children, noble in their pathos?

And what about the Negro? (That was the polite terminology of the day.) Even approaching 1900, a substantial number of white Americans in the northeast rarely if ever interacted with citizens of color. Oh, there were the Irish and Germans, who were bad enough, maybe an Eastern European sporadically, but a black man?

Minstrel shows were losing their popularity as Vaudeville became a thing, but the caricatures were well-instilled. On the other hand, there were those who insisted the Negro deserved the same rights and opportunities as white men – maybe not all of them, or to the same extent, but more than they seemed to be getting in the south, if what the papers wrote were true.

And then there was Oklahoma Territory. Formerly ‘Indian Territory’, it was gradually beginning to open its ‘surplus’ lands to white – and black – settlement. Social Darwinism at its purist – run in, hold your claim by any available means, and start from scratch along with everyone else to see what you can make out of these last few remnants of American opportunity.

That was the idealized version, at least. But it was about as close to starting on a ‘level playing field’ as most alive in that generation would ever see for Black Americans, however illusory the ‘level’ part of the equation may have been.

Topeka, Kan., April 8.- Is Oklahoma really overrun with negroes, and has there been an influx of pauper negroes from the South? So many conflicting answers have been given in response to these two questions that it was impossible to arrive at the truth.

In class, this is where we’d talk about ‘making good inferences’. What seems to be motivating this particular foray into the territory by this NY Times reporter? Why does he open with these questions?

Good times, those inference discussions.

The census taken there last Summer was of no use in aiding one to arrive at conclusions, for, while Guthrie enumerated, so it is said, the horses, dogs, and chickens as well as the “regular” population, Oklahoma and Kingfisher failed to count the men, women, and children, while Edmund, El Reno, and Lincoln are still in doubt as to what and who were counted, and Langston was not in existence.

My students have this weird idea that in 2015, all computers and institutions everywhere are neatly connected and speak the same ‘language’. I assume they get this idea from bad action movies and federal health care legislation.

But why they apply this assumption backwards through history is beyond me. Most of written history is an absolute mess. We make educated guesses – some fairly supportable, others just… the best we’ve got.

It’s somewhat reassuring to know that as recently as 1891, at least one contemporaneous observer realized they really had no idea what was going on with who, or where.

In order to determine the truth, THE TIMES’s representative determined to visit the Territory and see what was to be seen, and to learn from interested persons as much of the truth as they could be prevailed upon to surrender.

He’s setting us up with tone. I respect that.

Those who have never attempted to draw the truth from an Oklahomaite can hardly realize the difficulties that are presented. The Territory was born in falsehood, was baptized in falsehood, and falsehood has been the principal article of diet ever since that fateful 23rd day of April, 1889, when the “sooners” became the leading citizens of a country opened to settlement too late in the year for the planting of crops, and to which the poverty-stricken were invited by speculators and impecunious lawyers who had been permitted to enter beforehand by a pig-headed Administration, which could see nothing good outside the ague-stricken Wabash bottoms of Indiana.

I can’t tell you how often this bit cracks me up.

After basking in the pithy slander of early Oklahomans, don’t overlook the wonderful jab at President Benjamin Harrison. “{A}gue-stricken Wabash bottoms” just drips with disdain.

Harrison, of course, had made his way up the political ladder from Indianapolis, where he’s now buried. They’re rather proud of him up there – understandable, I suppose, since they really don’t have much else to boast on. I mean, you’ve seen the Colts in action, and their legislators are doing all they can to make Oklahoma’s current public education system look passionately committed to excellence compared to theirs.

But at least they have Ben Harrison’s corpse. That’s something, right?

I don’t really mean that last bit about Indy. It was simply an example of the sort of inflammatory writing popular among some readers in the time period under discussion. I do it solely to help bring HISTORY to YOU.

You’re welcome.

Guthrie, being the headquarters of the Afro-American Colonization Company, has naturally been the objective point of the negroes who have been induced to migrate to Oklahoma. It is impossible to ascertain how many of the black race have arrived in that city, the estimates vary so largely.
Those who are opposed to negro settlement declare positively that there are not fifty in the city. Those who favor the movement insist that there are more than two thousand in and about the capital. The latter is probably more nearly the correct figure, as an inspection of the city revealed many black faces, and an examination of many of the little houses in the suburbs showed a number of colored families comfortably situated.

It’s hard to know when facts are being willfully fabricated to serve an agenda, or when the perceptions of those gathering them are simply so colored by preconceptions that they see what they expect and intend to see.

Back then, I mean. Not today, when we have science. And numbers. And ALL THE FACTS.

That these negroes are not all paupers is shown by their bank deposits, where they have sums ranging from $200 to $1,000. In one bank alone sums aggregating over $15,000 have been deposited by the negro settlers.

I’d pause at this point in class and ask my students to speculate where the author is going with this. You should as well.

I’ll wait.

He may be simply refuting existing criticisms, point by point, in defense of Black settlers. Perhaps his point will be that they’re doing fine – just look at the evidence!

But we’ve already had a taste of the author’s tone. The news may be valid, but it’s swaddled in snark and personality. We should be suspicious. Is he setting us up for… something?

RELATED POST: The Blacks In Oklahoma, Part II

RELATED POST: The Blacks in Oklahoma, Part III

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Boomers & Sooners, Part Five ~ Cheater Cheater Red Dirt Eater

June 25, 2015June 4, 2023 ~ Blue Cereal

I confess I’ve always had a disproportionate revulsion and hostility towards people who cut in line, take up multiple parking places, or otherwise demonstrate an utter lack of interest in the possibility there are other people in the world but themselves.

My home was robbed when I was a kid. More upsetting than the stuff I lost was the inexpressible sense of violation, and marginalization. How could one person do that to another, consciously and willingly?

Lie to the IRS, abuse your meds, cheat on your man-toys if you must – but to take from another human being who’s no better off than yourself and to be OK with that…? I couldn’t get it.

Sooners weren’t stealing from the Amerindians – not by this point. They weren’t simply fooling the government, or the soldiers stationed there. They were decreeing through their actions that the wants and needs of those lined up for one last chance at the American Dream weren’t nearly as important as their avarice. Their presumption.

To hell with those families, those hopes – those rule-abiding suckers.

Perhaps we can excuse, if not entirely justify, the actions of desperate individuals willing to take big chances – to hide in the bushes or sneak past armed defenders. But what we so often gloss over in Oklahoma History is how many Sooners didn’t have to sneak in at all. They were there with permission. By orders, actually.

They were there being paid with the tax dollars of the fools waiting patiently for the starting gun.

From the New York Times, only a few days after the first Oklahoma Land Run:

Six or seven thousand people are huddled together in tents or shanties… enduring privations which assuredly had no part in the programme mapped out previous to the invasion. Today not fewer than one thousand men departed with disgust plainly stamped on their faces…
The cause of this revulsion of feeling on the part of men who a few weeks ago were singing the praises of the projected town, is the action of the United States Marshals in appointing as Deputies many real estate sharks and others who went to Guthrie solely to secure town lots in advance of the great body detained on the border by order of the Government. These so-called deputies appeared in Guthrie and Oklahoma City Saturday, and had the former site surveyed and selected before 10 o’clock Monday morning…
When the hour of 12 arrived Monday the deputies go in their work so effectually that when the trainload of boomers came in from the north some time later, all the best lots had been claimed…

Soldiers, land-surveyors, law enforcement – anyone with the right connections to get themselves into the territory ahead of time and scope out the best land. Often they’d announce their resignations minutes before noon, presumably in anticipation of future accusations they’d violated the terms of their employment.

Others didn’t bother. From Harper’s Weekly, May 18, 1889:

It was an eager and an exuberantly joyful crowd that rode slowly into Guthrie at twenty minutes past one o’clock on that perfect April afternoon. Men who had expected to lay out the town site were grievously disappointed at the first glimpse of their proposed scene of operations. The slope east of the railway at Guthrie station was dotted white with tents and sprinkled thick with men running about in all directions.
“We’re done for,” said a town-site speculator, in dismay. “Someone has gone in ahead of us and laid out the town.”
“Never mind that,” shouted another town-site speculator, “but make a rush and get what you can.”
Hardly had the train slackened its speed when the impatient boomers began to leap from the cars and run up the slope. Men jumped from the roofs of the moving cars at the risk of their lives. Some were so stunned by the fall that they could not get up for some minutes. The coaches were so crowded that many men were compelled to squeeze through the windows in order to get a fair start at the head of the crowd…
I ran with the first of the crowd to get a good point of view from which to see the rush. When I had time to look about me I found that I was standing beside a tent, near which a man was leisurely chopping holes in the sod with a new axe.
“Where did you come from, that you have already pitched your tent?” I asked.
“Oh, I was here,” said he.
“How was that?”
“Why, I was a deputy United States marshal.”
“Did you resign?”
“No; I’m a deputy still.”
“But it is not legal for a deputy United States marshal, or any one in the employ of the government, to take up a town lot in this manner.”
“That may all be, stranger; but I’ve got two lots here, just the same; and about fifty other deputies have got lots in the same way. In fact, the deputy-marshals laid out the town.”

Legal recourse was widely sought, of course, but those with the resources to pursue extended legal actions weren’t usually hanging out in the middle of nowhere running for land. Most Sooners kept their plots – especially those who’d acted collectively. How do you kick out an entire town, community leaders and all? And guess what…

That sort of advantage is self-perpetuating.

Sooners were far more likely to farm successfully, having started with better farms. They were generally more prosperous as merchants or other businessmen, having established ideal locations and opened for business while others were still gathering basic supplies. They’d produce the healthiest children who’d receive the best educations and have the best opportunities due to family connections and social savvy.

Some of this could simply reflect ‘grit’ – whatever else Sooners were, they weren’t lazy. Maybe the same drive that led them to cheat helped in legitimate endeavors as well. It would be silly to reduce the next century of development to who started where.

But it doesn’t take long before yesterday’s plunder is today’s hard-won prize. How many days passed before Sooner families began to credit themselves with the pluck and determination to make the run successfully? To disparage those less successful, who had THE SAME CHANCE and couldn’t cut it – slinking away in frustration and failure?

I mean, hey we were all part of the same run! Everyone had their shot. Are you saying I didn’t work for what I have?

I’m not interested in going back and wringing our lil’ hands and hearts over the sins of our forebearers. Land was a big deal, and people did worse for it than the things described here. Move on, people.

But that doesn’t mean we have to glorify it, or reframe it as something of which we should be particularly proud. I don’t see many states excited about labeling themselves the ‘Overseers’, the ‘Soiled Doves’, or the ‘Unrepentant Confederates’.

Actually, I take back that last one. They actually kinda do. But you get my point.

We may express periodic ambivalence towards Pretty Boy Floyd or the Daltons, but they at least robbed and killed those representing the system – the powerful – ‘the man’. Sooners robbed the commonest of common men, and did so just as he was risking everything to improve his condition and claim his small slice of the American Dream.

It’s not a bad reflection of larger issues in our national past and the much more significant advantages gained by some as a result. As with the Sooners, we would do well to periodically reconsider who and what we glorify in our own past – not to deny it or rewrite it, but to help us maintain clarity and honesty about ourselves.

I’ll pass on the perpetual lamenting and retroactive accusations. It’s not always helpful, and so easily turns sour. A little perspective and confession, however…

Well, they wouldn’t hurt.

Boomers & Sooners, Part Four ~ Dirty Stinkin’ No Good Sons Of…

June 20, 2015June 4, 2023 ~ Blue Cereal

You may remember the movie Far & Away – if for nothing else than Tom Cruise’s wonderful Irish brogue (“I’ll Get My Land! Pink Hearts! Yellow Moons! Green Clovers!” It also has a wonderful Oklahoma Land Run as part of the finale, including this moment:

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We’re rooting for the Christies the whole movie, of course. Wealthy landowners from Ireland, they are nevertheless stuck in a rut personally and socially, and after their home is destroyed by Irish tenant farmers (“Captain Moonlight!”) they come to the U.S. in pursuit of their daughter, and end up as Sooners in one of the major Oklahoma Land Runs. Adorable.

Not all Sooners were such loveable characters, however. From the New York Times, April 25th, 1889:

The stories told of the opening-day exploits are as varied as they are entertaining. The impression seems to be general that at noon of that day there were enough men in the Territory to take up every available homestead.
”The fact is,” said and intelligent boomer from Marshall County, Kan., “the soldiers were not half so anxious to keep people out of the territory as they were said to be. I know perfectly well that the train on which I journeyed from Arkansas City… left several hundred men inside the proscribed territory. They dropped off at every station and hid in freight cars, or crossed the prairie to the nearest brush and secreted themselves.
Monday’s event showed that at the hour of noon men appeared as if by magic around the stations of Oklahoma City, Norman, and Walker, and of course the same scenes were witnessed at Guthrie… What possible show did an outsider have against these men?”

All of this was possible because the Boomers had finally ‘won’ – at least in terms of the public debate. In March of 1889, Congress passed an amendment to the Indian Appropriations Act (1871) opening the Unassigned Lands in Indian Territory to settlement under the same terms as the Homestead Act (1862).

I realize that sounds a bit dry, which is why I usually just go with ‘the Boomers had finally won’.

It was later announced that these lands would be opened up through a ‘Land Run’ – an approach which certainly reduced paperwork and eliminated the traditional 5-year waiting period before taking title to a section of this last remnant of American frontier, now being referred to more and more often as “Oklahoma.” It was a weird system even for the times – times far more interesting than usually credited.

A little over a year after that first Land Run in 1889, the U.S. Census Bureau would proclaim the frontier ‘closed’ – vanished, actually – with no new lands left to settle or civilize. This was the statistic which prompted Frederick Jackson Turner’s famous “Frontier Thesis,” presented in Chicago in 1893 as part of the World’s Columbian Exposition celebrating the four-hundredth anniversary of Columbus’ voyage of discovery.

The 1890’s was a big decade for the ‘common man’. The Wounded Knee Massacre effectively ended Amerindian resistance on the Great Plains (or anywhere else, for that matter), the American Frontier was decreed to have officially passed away, the Second Industrial Revolution was beginning in the northeast, and thanks to that first big land run, the Organic Act begins nudging Oklahoma towards statehood. Populism becomes a thing, returning in various forms as Progressivism, the New Deal, the Great Society, and eventually Obamacare and Teen Mom 3.

People were reading Kate Chopin, H.G. Wells, Bram Stoker, and Oscar Wilde, while Arthur Conan Doyle introduced a new character named “Sherlock Holmes.” Those kids from Newsies, led by a young Bruce Wayne, were doing that thing they wanted the world to know, although it’s unclear whether they used the same choreography as in the movie. L. Frank Baum was writing The Wonderful Wizard of Oz so that schoolchildren a century later could discuss bimetallism without losing consciousness, and those guys who kinda invented flying machines just prior to the Wright Brothers were crashing them in various interesting ways as part of their efforts to claim the skies.

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There was a depression in 1893, but other than that things were good until Mark Twain labeled it ‘The Gilded Age’ – a term suggesting it was all a thinly veiled illusion masking sickness and corruption, and now a common chapter title in any American History textbook discussing the advent of the 20th century.

Twain was SUCH a downer.

The census was a year away, but the sense that the nation was ‘filling up’ and land was ‘running out’ was hardly news to Boomers and others looking for those last few opportunities in the west. The future state of Oklahoma, once so disparaged that the Natives were placed there by force so white guys could have the GOOD land, was looking better and better as other options fell away. Necessity, it seems, was the mother of invasion.

So President Benjamin Harrison, as one of his first acts in office, officially set April 22, 1889, exactly at noon, as the starting time for this madness. Three or four times the number of settlers as there were plots, competing under limited supervision for land they no doubt considered essential to their very survival. Social Darwinism, thy name is Oklahoma.

Ironic, isn’t it?

Perhaps it’s little wonder, then, that so many cheated. Sometimes it wasn’t even a question of WHETHER you’d cheated, but whether you’d cheated ENOUGH:

{Two Sooners, Grant and Crossman,} had taken advantage of the temporary absence of the troops from one of the fording places and crossed in advance of the main column, so that when the signal was given they were probably a mile beyond the river. They rode at a gallop the entire distance and came upon the desired ground just as a man broke from the timber with a hatchet in his hand and planted a stake in one of the claims. The man then quietly mounted his horse and waited for the friends to approach.
“Rather got ahead of ye, didn’t I, boys?” he asked, when they came up.
The tone and the accompanying leer excited Crossman beyond measure, and he drew his revolver and fired at the stranger. The bullet went wide, and the man, without an instant’s hesitation, hurled his hatchet at Crossman. The blade struck him full in the forehead, and he fell dead in his tracks…

Still, even this we might sweep aside as typical of the times. We must not judge the past by the standards of our far-more-convenient present. Perhaps hatchet lad, and Grant – who went on to shoot the bastard – may be excused for their Lord of the Flies behavior.

But they were only one kind of Sooner. The far more loathsome sort remind me of too many people today.

Maybe that’s why I’m bitter.