Part 5
I met several of these prominent citizens while in Creede, and found them affable. Billy Woods fights, or used to fight, at two hundred and ten pounds, and rejoices in the fact that a New York paper once devoted five columns to his personality. His reputation saves him the expense of paying men to keep order. Bob Ford, who shot Jesse James, was another prominent citizen of my acquaintance. He does not look like a desperado, but has a loutish apologetic air, which is explained by the fact that he shot Jesse James in the back, when the latter was engaged in the innocent work of hanging a picture on the wall. Ford never quite recovered from the fright he received when he found out who it was that he had killed. “Bat” Masterden was of an entirely different class. He dealt for Watrous, and has killed twenty-eight men, once three together. One night when he was off duty I saw a drunken man slap his face, and the silence was so great that we could hear the electric light sputter in the next room; but Masterden only laughed, and told the man to come back and do it again when he was sober. “Troublesome Tom” Cady acted as a capper for “Soapy” Smith, and played the shell game during the day. He was very grateful to me for teaching him a much superior method in which the game is played in the effete East. His master, “Soapy” Smith, was a very bad man indeed, and hired at least twelve men to lead the prospector with a little money, or the tenderfoot who had just arrived, up to the numerous tables in his gambling-saloon, where they were robbed in various ways so openly that they deserved to lose all that was taken from them.
There were also some very good shots at Creede, and some very bad ones. Of these latter was Mr. James Powers, who emptied his revolver and Rab Brothers’ store at the same time without doing any damage. He explained that he was crowded and wanted more room. The most delicate shooting was done by the Louisiana Kid--I don’t know what his other name was--who was robbed in Soapy Smith’s saloon, and was put out when he expostulated. He waited patiently until one of Smith’s men named Farnham, appeared, and then, being more intent in showing his skill than on killing Farnham, shot the thumb off his right hand as it rested on the trigger. Farnham shifted his pistol to his left hand, with which he shot equally well, but before he could fire the Kid shot the thumb off that hand too.
This is, of course, Creede at night. It is not at all a dangerous place, and the lawlessness is scattered and mild. There was only one street, and as no one cared to sit on the edge of a bunk in a cold room at night, the gambling-houses were crowded in consequence every evening. It was simply because there was nowhere else to go. The majority of the citizens used them as clubs, and walked from one to the other talking claims and corner lots, and dived down into their pockets for specimens of ore which they passed around for examination. Others went there to keep warm, and still others to sleep in the corner until they were put out. The play was never high. There was so much of it, though, that it looked very bad and wicked and rough, but it was quite harmless. There were no sudden oaths, nor parting of the crowd, and pistol-shots or gleaming knives--or, at least, but seldom. The women who frequented these places at night, in spite of their sombreros and flannel shirts and belts, were a most unpicturesque and unattractive element. They were neither dashing and bold, nor remorseful and repentant.
They gambled foolishly, and laughed when they won, and told the dealer he cheated when they lost. The men occasionally gave glimpses of the life which Bret Harte made dramatic and picturesque--the women, never. The most uncharacteristic thing of the place, and one which was Bret Hartish in every detail, was the service held in Watrous and Bannigan’s gambling-saloon. The hall is a very long one with a saloon facing the street, and keno tables, and a dozen other games in the gambling-room beyond. When the doors between the two rooms are held back they make a very large hall. A clergyman asked Watrous if he could have the use of the gambling-hall on Sunday night. The house was making about three hundred dollars an hour, and Watrous calculated that half an hour would be as much as he could afford towards the collection. He mounted a chair and said, “Boys, this gentleman wants to make a few remarks to you of a religious nature. All the games at that end of the hall will stop, and you want to keep still.”
The clergyman stood on the platform of the keno outfit, and the greater part of the men took the seats around it, toying with the marking cards scattered over the table in front of them, while the men in the saloon crowded the doorway from the swinging doors to the bar, and looked on with curious and amused faces. At the back of the room the roulette wheel clicked and the ball rolled. The men in this part of the room who were playing lowered their voices, but above the voice of the preacher one could hear the clinking of the silver and the chips, and the voice of the boy at the wheel calling, “seventeen and black, and twenty-eight and black again and--keep the ball rolling, gentlemen--and four and red.” There are two electric lights in the middle of the hall and a stove; the men were crowded closely around this stove, and the lamps shone through the smoke on their tanned upturned faces and on the white excited face of the preacher above them. There was the most excellent order, and the collection was very large. I asked Watrous how much he lost by the interruption.
“Nothing,” he said, quickly, anxious to avoid the appearance of good; “I got it all back at the bar.”
Of the inner life of Creede I saw nothing; I mean the real business of the place--the speculation in real estate and in mines. Capitalists came every day, and were carried off up the mountains to look at a hole in the ground, and down again to see the assay tests of the ore taken from it. Prospectors scoured the sides of the mountains from sundawn to sunset, and at night their fires lit up the range, and their little heaps of stone and their single stick, with their name scrawled on it in pencil, made the mountains look like great burying-grounds. All of the land within two miles of Creede was claimed by these simple proofs of ownership--simple, yet as effectual as a parchment sealed and signed. When the snow has left the mountains, and these claims can be worked, it will be time enough to write the real history of the rise or fall of Creede.
IV
A THREE-YEAR-OLD CITY
IV
A THREE-YEAR-OLD CITY
THE only interest which the East can take in Oklahoma City for some time to come must be the same as that with which one regards a portrait finished by a lightning crayon artist, “with frame complete,” in ten minutes. We may have seen better portraits and more perfect coloring, but we have never watched one completed, as it were, “while you wait.” People long ago crowded to see Master Betty act, not because there were no better actors in those days, but because he was so very young to do it so very well. It was as a freak of nature, a Josef Hoffman of the drama, that they considered him, and Oklahoma City must content itself with being only of interest as yet as a freak of our civilization.
After it has decided which of the half-dozen claimants to each of its town sites is the only one, and the others have stopped appealing to higher and higher courts, and have left the law alone and have reduced their attention strictly to business, and the city has been burned down once or twice, and had its Treasurer default and its Mayor impeached, and has been admitted to the National Baseball League, it may hope to be regarded as a full-grown rival city; but at present, as far as it concerns the far East, it is interesting chiefly as a city that grew up overnight, and did in three years or less what other towns have accomplished only after half a century.
The history of its pioneers and their invasion of their undiscovered country not only shows how far the West is from the East, but how much we have changed our ways of doing things from the days of the Pilgrim Fathers to those of the modern pilgrims, the “boomers” and “sooners” of the end of the century. We have seen pictures in our school-books, and pictures which Mr. Boughton has made for us, of the _Mayflower’s_ people kneeling on the shore, the long, anxious voyage behind them, and the “rock-bound coast” of their new home before them, with the Indians looking on doubtfully from behind the pine-trees. It makes a very interesting picture--those stern-faced pilgrims in their knickerbockers and broad white collars; each man strong in the consciousness that he has resisted persecution and overcome the perils of the sea, and is ready to meet the perils of an unknown land. I should like you to place in contrast with this the opening of Oklahoma Territory to the new white settlers three years ago. These modern pilgrims stand in rows twenty deep, separated from the promised land not by an ocean, but by a line scratched in the earth with the point of a soldier’s bayonet. The long row toeing this line are bending forward, panting with excitement, and looking with greedy eyes towards the new Canaan, the women with their dresses tucked up to their knees, the men stripped of coats and waistcoats for the coming race. And then, a trumpet call, answered by a thousand hungry yells from all along the line, and hundreds of men and women on foot and on horseback break away across the prairie, the stronger pushing down the weak, and those on horseback riding over and in some cases killing those on foot, in a mad, unseemly race for something which they are getting for nothing. These pilgrims do not drop on one knee to give thanks decorously, as did Columbus according to the twenty-dollar bills, but fall on both knees, and hammer stakes into the ground and pull them up again, and drive them down somewhere else, at a place which they hope will eventually become a corner lot facing the post-office, and drag up the next man’s stake, and threaten him with a Winchester because he is on _their_ land, which they have owned for the last three minutes. And there are no Indians in this scene. They have been paid one dollar and twenty-five cents an acre for the land, which is worth five dollars an acre as it lies, before a spade has been driven into it or a bit of timber cut, and they are safely out of the way.
Oklahoma Territory, which lies in the most fertile part of the Indian Territory, equally distant from Kansas and Texas, was thrown open to white settlers at noon on the 22d of April, 1889. To appreciate the Oklahoma City of this day, it is necessary to go back to the Oklahoma of three years ago. The city at that time consisted of a railroad station, a section-house and water-tank, the home of the railroad agent, and four other small buildings. The rest was prairie-land, with low curving hills covered with high grass and bunches of thick timber; this as far as the eye could see, and nothing else. This land, which is rich and black and soft, and looks like chocolate where the plough has turned the sod, was thrown open by the proclamation of the President to white settlers, who could on such a day, at such an hour, “enter and occupy it” for homestead holdings. A homestead holding is one hundred and sixty acres of land. The proclamation said nothing about town sites, or of the division of town sites into “lots” for stores, or of streets and cross-streets. But several bodies of men in different parts of Kansas prepared plans long before the opening, for a town to be laid out around the station, the water-tank, and the other buildings where Oklahoma City now stands, and had their surveyors and their blue prints hidden away in readiness for the 22d of April. All of those who intended to enter this open-to-all-comers race for land knew that the prairie around the station would be laid out into lots. Hence that station and other stations which in time would become cities were the goals for which over forty thousand people raced from the borders of the new Territory. So many of these “beat the pistol” on the start and reached the goal first that, in consequence, the efforts ever since to run this race over again through the law courts has kept Oklahoma City from growing with even more marvellous rapidity than it already has done.
The Sunday before the 22d was a warm bright day, and promised well for the morrow. Soldiers and deputy marshals were the only living beings in sight around the station, and those who tried to descend from passing trains were pushed back again at the point of the bayonet. The course was being kept clear for the coming race. But freight cars loaded with raw lumber and furniture and all manner of household goods, as well as houses themselves, ready to be put together like the joints of a trout rod, were allowed free entry, and stood for a mile along the side-track awaiting their owners, who were hugging the border lines from fifteen to thirty miles away. Captain D. F. Stiles, of the Tenth Infantry, who had been made provost marshal of the new Territory, and whose soldiers guarded the land before and maintained peace after the invasion, raised his telescope at two minutes to twelve on the eventful 22d of April, and saw nothing from the station to the horizon but an empty green prairie of high waving grass. It would take the first horse (so he and General Merritt and his staff in their private car on the side-track decided) at least one hour and a quarter to cover the fifteen miles from the nearest border. They accordingly expected to catch the first glimpse of the leaders in the race with their glasses in about half an hour. The signal on the border was a trumpet call given by a cavalryman on a white horse, which he rode in a circle in order that those who were too far away to hear the trumpet might see that it had been sounded. A like signal was given at the station; but before it had died away, and _not_ half an hour later, five hundred men sprang from the long grass, dropped from the branches of trees, crawled from under freight cars and out of cañons and ditches, and the blank prairie became alive with men running and racing about like a pack of beagles that have suddenly lost a hot trail.
Fifteen minutes after twelve the men of the Seminole Land and Town Company were dragging steel chains up the street on a run, the red and white barber poles and the transits were in place all over the prairie, and neat little rows of stakes stretched out in regular lines to mark where they hoped the town might be. At twenty minutes after twelve over forty tents were in position, and the land around them marked out by wooden pegs. This was the work of the “sooners,” as those men were called who came into the Territory too soon, not for their own interests, but for the interests of other people. At a quarter past one the Rev. James Murray and a Mr. Kincaid, who represented the Oklahoma Colony, stopped a sweating horse and creaking buggy and hammered in their first stakes. They had left the border line exactly at noon, and had made the fifteen miles at the rate of five minutes per mile. Four minutes later J. H. McCortney and Colonel Harrison, of Kansas, arrived from the Canadian River, having whipped their horses for fifteen miles, and the mud from the river was over the hubs of the wheels. The first train from the south reached the station at five minutes past two, and unloaded twenty-five hundred people. They scattered like a stampeded herd over the prairie, driving in their little stakes, and changing their minds about it and driving them in again at some other point. There were already, even at this early period of the city’s history, over three different men on each lot of ground, each sitting by the stake bearing his name, and each calling the other a “sooner,” and therefore one ineligible to hold land, and many other names of more ancient usage.
But there was no blood shed even during the greatest excitement of that feverish afternoon. This was in great part due to the fact that the provost marshal confiscated all the arms he saw. At three o’clock the train from the north arrived with hundreds more hanging from the steps and crowding the aisles. The sight of so many others who had beaten them in the race seemed to drive these late-comers almost frantic, and they fell over one another in their haste, and their race for the choicest lots was like a run on a bank when no one knows exactly where the bank is. One young woman was in such haste to alight that she crawled out of the car window, and as soon as she reached the solid earth beneath, drove in her stake and claimed all the land around it. This was part of the military reservation, and the soldiers explained this to her, or tried to, but she was suspicious of every one, and remained seated by her wooden peg until nightfall. She could just as profitably have driven it into the centre of Union Square. Another woman stuck up a sign bearing the words, “A Soldier’s Widow’s Land,” and was quite confident that the chivalry of the crowd would respect that title. Captain Stiles told her that he thought it would not, and showed her a lot of ground still unclaimed that she could have, but she refused to move. The lot he showed her is now on the main street, in the centre of the town, and the lot she was finally forced to take is three miles out of the city in the prairie. Another woman drove her stake between the railroad ties, and said it would take a locomotive and a train of cars to move _her_. One man put his stake in the very centre of the lot sites laid out by the surveyors, and claimed the one hundred and sixty acres around for his homestead holding. They explained to him that he could only have as much land as would make a lot in the town site, and that if he wanted one hundred and sixty acres, must locate it outside of the city limits. He replied that the proclamation said nothing about town sites.
“But, of course,” he went on, “if you people want to build a city around my farm, I have no objections. I don’t care for city life myself, and I am going to turn this into a vegetable garden. Maybe, though, if you want it very bad, I _might_ sell it.”
He and the city fought it out for months, and, for all I know, are at it still. At three o’clock, just three hours after the Territory was invaded, the Oklahoma Colony declared the polls open, and voting began for Mayor and City Clerk. About four hundred people voted. Other land companies at once held public meetings and protested against this election. Each land company was mapping out and surveying the city to suit its own interests, and every man and woman was more or less of a land company to himself or herself, and the lines and boundaries and streets were intersecting and crossing like the lines of a dress pattern. Night came on and put a temporary hush to this bedlam, and six thousand people went to sleep in the open air, the greater part of them without shelter. There was but one well in the city, and word was brought to Captain Stiles about noon of the next day that the water from this was being sold by a speculative gentleman at five cents per pint, and that those who had no money were suffering. Captain Stiles found the well guarded by a faro-dealer with a revolver. He had a tin basin between his knees filled with nickels. He argued that he owned the lot on which the water stood, and had as much private right to the well as to a shaft that led down to a silver or an iron mine. Captain Stiles threw him and his basin out at some distance on to the prairie, and detailed a corporal’s guard to see that every one should get as much water as he wanted.
During the morning there was an attempt made to induce the surveyors of the different land companies to combine and readjust their different plans, but without success. Finally, at three o clock, the people came together in desperation to decide what was to be done, and, after an amusing and exciting mass-meeting, fourteen unhappy and prominent citizens were selected to agree upon an entirely new site. The choosing of this luckless fourteen was accomplished by general nomination, each nominee having first to stand upon a box that he might be seen and considered by the crowd. They had to submit to such embarrassing queries as, “Where are you from, and why did you have to leave?” “Where did you get that hat?” “What is your excuse for living?” “Do you live with your folks, or does your wife support you?” “What was your other name before you came here?” The work of this committee began on the morrow, and as they slowly proceeded along the new boundary lines which they had mapped out, they were followed by all of those of the population, which now amounted to ten thousand souls, who thought it safe to leave their claims. As a rule, they found three men on each lot, and it was their pleasant duty to decide to which of these the lot belonged. They did this on the evidence of those who had lots near by. In many cases, each member of each family had selected a lot for himself, and this complicated matters still farther. The crowd at last became so importunate and noisy that the committee asked for a military guard, which was given them, and the crowd after that was at least kept off the lot they were considering. The committee met with no real opposition until it reached Main Street on Saturday, the fifth day of the city’s life, where those who had settled along the lines laid down by the Seminole Land Company pulled up the stakes of the citizens’ committee as soon as they were driven down. For a time it looked very much as though the record of peace was about to be broken along with other things, but a committee of five men from each side of the street decided the matter at a meeting held that afternoon. At this same public meeting articles of confederation were adopted, and a temporary Mayor, Recorder, Police Judge, and other city officials were appointed, who were to receive one dollar for their services. This meeting closed with cheers and with the singing of the doxology.
The next day was Sunday, and was more or less observed. Captain Stiles visited the gamblers, who swarmed about the place in great numbers, and asked them to close their tables, which they did, although he had no power to stop them if they had not wished to do so. In the afternoon two separate religious services were held, to which the people were called by a trumpeter from the infantry camp.
This is, in brief, the history of the first week of this new city. There were, considering the circumstances, but few disturbances, and there was no drunkenness. This is disappointing, but true. Both came later. But at the first no one cared to shoot the gentleman on the other end of his lot, lest the man on the next lot might prove to be a relative of his, and begin to shoot too. Later on, when everybody became better acquainted, the shooting was more general. They could not easily get anything to drink, as Captain Stiles seized all the liquor, and when it came in vessels of unmanageable size that could not be stored away, spilled it over the prairie. In two weeks over one thousand buildings were enclosed, and there would have been more if there had been more lumber.