Category: Historical Novels

The Conquest: The Story of a Negro Pioneer

Good gracious, has it been that long? It does not seem possible; but it was this very day nine years ago when a fellow handed me this little what-would-you-call-it, Ingalls called it "Opportunity." I've a notion to burn it, but I won't--not this time, instead, I'll put it down...

Chapters

34. CHAPTER XXXIV

I had in due time heard from Orlean saying she and Mrs. Ewis had arrived safely home. She wrote: "When I came into the house mama grabbed me and held me for a long time as thoug...

43. CHAPTER XLIII

During the winter I had planned a way to get to see my wife, and took the first step toward carrying it out, immediately following my arrival in the city.

4. CHAPTER IV

The P----n Company is a big palace, dining and sleeping car company that most American people know a great deal about. I had long desired to have a run on one of the magnificent...

37. CHAPTER XXXVII

It is not commonly known by the white people at large that a great number of colored people are against Mr. Washington. Being an educator and philanthropist, it is hard to conce...

3. CHAPTER III

That was on Sunday morning three hundred miles south of Chicago, and at nine-forty that night I stepped off the New Orleans and Chicago fast mail into a different world. It was,...

25. CHAPTER XXV

It had been just four years since I bought the relinquishment and seven since leaving southern Illinois. I had been very successful in farming although I had made some very poor...

36. CHAPTER XXXVI

Usually in the story of a man's life, or in fiction, when he gets the girl's consent to marry, first admitting the love, the story ends; but with mine it was much to the contrar...

41. CHAPTER XLI

A cloudy and threatening day in May, there came an inch of rainfall. I had completed sowing two hundred and fifty acres of flax a few days before, and soon everything looked bea...

14. CHAPTER XIV

The entire Little Crow reservation consisted of about two million acres of land, four-fifths of which was unopened and lay west of Megory County. Of the two million acres, perha...

16. CHAPTER XVI

The first day of May was a local holiday in Megory, held in honor of the first anniversary of the day when all settlers had to be on their claims; and it was raining. During the...

1. CHAPTER I

Good gracious, has it been that long? It does not seem possible; but it was this very day nine years ago when a fellow handed me this little what-would-you-call-it, Ingalls call...

33. CHAPTER XXXIII

After the lot sale Amro still refused to move. It was then Ernest Nicholson said the town had to be overcome somehow and he had to do it. The business men of the town continued...

31. CHAPTER XXXI

As before mentioned, I was given largely to observation and to reading and was fairly well posted on current events. I was always a lover of success and nothing interested me mo...

35. CHAPTER XXXV

Toward spring the snow melted and with gum boots I plunged into the cold, wet corn field and began gathering the corn. It was nasty, cold work. The damp earth sent cold chills u...

27. CHAPTER XXVII

Getting back to the affair of the Scotch girl, I hated to give up her kindness and friendship. I would have given half my life to have had her possess just a least bit of negro...

38. CHAPTER XXXVIII

I was preparing to seed the biggest crop I had ever sown. With Orlean helping me, by bringing the dinner to the field and doing some chores, during the fall we had put the farm...

39. CHAPTER XXXIX

I waited to hear from my wife in Chicago but at the end of two weeks I had not heard from her, although I had written three letters, and a week later I journeyed to Colone and t...

28. CHAPTER XXVIII

Here the story may have ended, that is, had I taken her to the minister, but as everybody had gone land crazy in Dakota and I had determined to own more land myself, I told her...

11. CHAPTER XI

It must have been about the twentieth of April when I finished building. I started to "batch" and prepared to break out my claim. Having only one horse, it became necessary to b...

30. CHAPTER XXX

After completing the first survey, however, the surveyors returned, and made another that struck Amro. This survey swerved off from the first survey to the southwest between Col...

6. CHAPTER VI

It came a few days later in a restaurant in Council Bluffs, Iowa, when I heard the waiters, one white man and the other colored, saying, "I'm going to Oristown." "And where is O...

7. CHAPTER VII

When I left St. Louis on the night of October fourth I headed for Oristown to buy someone's relinquishment. I had two thousand, five hundred dollars. From Omaha the journey was...

32. CHAPTER XXXII

People began forming into line immediately after luncheon, on the afternoon of the last day of September and continued throughout the afternoon. When I saw such a crowd gatherin...

21. CHAPTER XXI

This valuable tract of land comprising about fifty thousand acres had been entered after the opening, by settlers, and lay about as near to Kirk as it did to Megory, hence its t...

2. CHAPTER II

I was seventeen when I at last left M--pls. I accepted a rough job at a dollar and a quarter a day in a car manufacturing concern in a town of eight thousand population, about e...

5. CHAPTER V

In justice to the many thousands of P----n porters, as well as many conductors, who were in the habit of retaining the company's money, let it be said that they are not the hung...

23. CHAPTER XXIII

Long before I came west and during the years I had spent on the homestead, my closest companion was the magazines. From the time Thomas W. Lawson's "Frenzied Finance" had run as...

17. CHAPTER XVII

The big hotel from Calias had not long since been unloaded and decorated a corner lot in Megory. All that remained in Calias were the buildings belonging to Nicholson Brothers,...

12. CHAPTER XII

Of neighbors, I had many. There was Miss Carter from old Missouri whose claim joined mine on the west, and another Missourian to the north of her; a loud talking German north of...

19. CHAPTER XIX

Nothing 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...

8. CHAPTER VIII

After the presidential election of that year I went to South America with a special party, consisting mostly of New York capitalists and millionaires. We traveled through the so...

10. CHAPTER X

That evening at the hotel he asked me whether I wished to double my money by selling my relinquishment. "No," I answered, "but I tell you what I do want to do," I replied firmly...

24. CHAPTER XXIV

The registration opened at twelve o'clock Monday morning. Seven trains during the night before had brought something like seven thousand people. Of this number about two thousan...

29. CHAPTER XXIX

The boom in Megory and Calias took such proportions that it made every investor prosperous, a goodly number of whom sold out, settled in Amoureaux, and the beautiful townsite so...

15. CHAPTER XV

The drummer's information soon received corroboration from other sources, and although it seemed almost unbelievable, it was discussed incessantly and excitement ran high. These...

26. CHAPTER XXVI

Some time after the opening it was announced from Washington that the Land Office, which was located in one of the larger towns of the state, about one hundred and fifty miles f...

40. CHAPTER XL

During the first half of the sixteenth century, Menno Simons founded a denomination of Christians in Friesland, a province of the Netherlands. Many of these Mennonites settled i...

42. CHAPTER XLII

Although the drouth had been broken all over the north, it lingered on, to the south. My parents wrote me from Kansas, that thousands of acres of wheat, sown early in the fall,...

13. CHAPTER XIII

I decided to utilize some of my spare time by doing a little freighting from Oristown to Calias. Accordingly, one fair morning I started for the former town. It began raining th...

18. CHAPTER XVIII

Megory was still on the boom, not quite as much as the summer before, but more than it was some time later, for as yet New Calias was still regarded as a joke, until one day Sta...

20. CHAPTER XX

After the vigilants had frightened the outlaws into abandoning their operations in the valley, the thieves skulked across the reservation to a strip of country some twenty-five...

22. CHAPTER XXII

Coincident with the expectation came the president's proclamation throwing four thousand claims in Tipp county open to settlement under the lottery system at six dollars per acr...

9. CHAPTER IX

I left St. Louis about April first with about three thousand dollars in the bank and started again for Oristown, this time to stay. I had just paid Jessie a visit and I felt a l...