The Conquest; the Story of a Negro Pioneer/Chapter 19
othing is more essential to the upbuilding of the small western town, than a good agricultural territory, and this was where Calias found its first handicap. When it had moved to its new location, scores of investors had flocked to the town, paying the highest prices that had ever been paid for lots in a new country town, of its kind, in the central west.
Twenty-five miles south of the two towns, where a sand stream known as the Keya Paha wends its way, is a fertile valley. It had been settled thirty years before by eastern people, who hauled their hogs and drove their cattle and sheep fifty miles in a southerly direction, to a railroad. Although the valley could not be surpassed in the production of corn, wheat, oats, and alfalfa, the highlands on either side are threat mountains of sand, which produce nothing but a long reddish grass, that stock will not eat after it reaches maturity, and which stands in bunches, with the sand blown from around its roots, to such an extent that riding or driving over it is very difficult.
These hills rise to heights until they resemble the Sierras, and near the top, on the northwest slope of each, are cave-like holes where the strong winds have blown a squeegee.
The wagon road to the railway on the south was sandy and made traveling over it slow and hazardous by the many pits and dunes. Therefore, it is to be seen, when the C. & R. W. pushed its line through Megory County, everything that had been going to the road on the south began immediately to come to the road on the north—where good hard roads made the traveling much easier, and furthermore, it was only half the distance.
Keya Paha County was about as lonely a place as I had ever seen. After the sun went down, the coyotes from the adjacent sand hills, in a series of mournful howls, filled the air with a noise which echoed and re-echoed throughout the valley, like the music of so many far-away steam calliopes and filled me with a cold, creepy feeling. For thirty years these people had heard no other sound save the same monotonous howls and saw only each other. The men went to Omaha occasionally with cattle, but the women and children knew little else but Keya Paha County.
During a trip into this valley the first winter I spent on the homestead, in quest of seed wheat, I met and talked with families who had children, in some instances twenty years of age, who had never seen a colored man. Sometimes the little tads would run from me, screaming as though they had met a lion or some other wild beast of the forest. At one place where I stopped over night, a little girl about nine years of age, looked at me with so much curiosity that I became amused, finally coaxing her onto my knee. She continued to look hard at me, then meekly reached up and touched my chin, looked into my eyes, and said: "Why don't you wash your face?" When supper was ready went to the sink and washed my face and hands; she watched me closely in the meanwhile, and when I was through, appeared to be vexed and with an expression as if to say: "He has cleaned it thoroughly, but it is dirty still."
About twenty years previous to this time, or about ten years after settlement in this valley, the pioneers were continually robbed of much of their young stock. Thieving outlaws kept up a continuous raid on the young cattle and colts, driving them onto the reservation, where they disappeared. This continued for years, and it was said many of the county officials encouraged it, in a way, by delaying a trial, and inasmuch as the law and its procedure was very inadequate, on account of the county's remote location, the criminals were rarely punished.
After submitting to such until all reasonable patience had been exhausted, the settlers formed "a vigilant committee," and meeted out punishment to the evil doers, who had become over-bold and were well known. After hanging a few, as well as whipping many, the vigilanters ridded the county of rustlers, and lived in peace thereafter.
At the time the railroad was built to Megory there was little activity other than the common routine attending their existence. But with Megory twenty-five miles to the north, and many of her former active and prosperous citizens living there; and while board walks and "shack" buildings still represented the Main Street, Megory was considered by the people of the valley very much of a city, and a great place to pay a visit. Many had never seen or ridden on a railroad train, so Megory sounded in _page_128.jpg)
Keya Paha County as Chicago does to the down state people of Illionis.
The people of Keya Paha County had grown prosperous, however, and the stock shipments comprised many train loads, during an active market. Practically all this was coming to Megory when Calias began to loom prominent as a model little city.
I could see two distinct classes, or personages, in the leaders of the two towns. Beginning with Ernest Nicholson, the head of the firm of Nicholson Brothers and called by Megoryites "chief" "high mogul," the "big it" and "I am," in absolute control of Calias affairs; and the former Keya Paha County sand rats—as they are sometimes called—running Megory. The two contesting parties presented a contrast which interested me.
The Nicholson Brothers were all college-bred boys, with a higher conception of things in general; were modern, free and up-to-date. While Megory's leaders were as modern as could be expected, but were simply outclassed in the style and perfection that the Calias bunch presented. Besides, the merchants and business men—in the "stock yards west of Megory," as Calias was cartooned by a Megory editor, were much of the same ilk. And referring to the cartoon, it pictured the editor of the Calias News as a braying jackass in a stock pen, which brought a great laugh from Megoryites, but who got it back, however, the next week by being pictured as a stagnant pond, with two Megory editors as a couple of big bull-frogs. This had the effect of causing the town to begin grading the streets, putting in cement walks and gutters, for Megory had located in the beginning in an extremely bad place. The town was located in a low place, full of alkali spots, buffalo wallows underlaid with hardpan, which caused the surface to hold water to such an extent, that, when rain continued to fall any length of time, the cellars and streets stood in water.
But Megory had the start, with the largest and best territory, which had by this time been developed into improved farms; the real farmer was fast replacing the homesteader. It had the biggest and best banks. Regardless of all the efficiency of Calias, it appeared weak in its banking. Now a farmer could go to Nicholson Brothers, and get the largest farm loan because the boys' father was president of an insurance company that made the loan, but the banks there were short in the supply of time loans on stock security, but Calias' greatest disadvantage was, that directly west in Tipp County the Indians had taken their allotments within seven or eight miles of the town, and there was hardly a quarter section to be homesteaded.
Now there was no doubt but that in the course of time the Indian allotments would be bought, whenever the government felt disposed to grant the Indian a patent; which under the laws is not supposed to be issued until the expiration of twenty-five years. People, however, would probably lease the land, break it up and farm it; but that would not occur until some future date, and Calias needed it at the present time.
A western town, in most instances, gets its boom in the beginning, for later a dry rot seems an inevitable condition, and is likely to overtake it after the first excitement wears away. Resurrection is rare. These were the conditions that faced the town on the Little Crow, at the beginning of the third year of settlement.