Dividing the Spoils
As late as twenty-five years ago the same conditions obtained over a limited extent of the western territory, and the homesteading of Government land continued normally, steadily, always a little in advance of railroads and the comforts which come with settled conditions. Finally the arid and semi-arid lands of the eastern Rocky Mountain slope were reached; railroads extended everywhere. Then, instead of a fertile farm in the wilds to be obtained at the cost of personal comfort, the prospective homesteader was offered decidedly unproductive land within easy distance of railroad and town. Still the business of homesteading went on; but the high prairies refused to yield the expected reward. The disastrous recoil from the great eastern slope will not soon be forgotten, either by the over-confident settlers, or by the eastern investors who later acquired the "farms" as souvenirs of money loaned and lost.
With the taking of the last of the really good public lands, the wave of restless humanity which constitutes the cutting edge of civilization turned back to the Indian reservations—generally large, fertile tracts, adjacent to well-developed country. There the land-seekers gazed hungrily at the possessions for which the Indians had given up their great hunting-grounds. With a Government at its beck and call, pledged to execute the expressed will of the people, it was not in human nature for these
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