1893 - The Strip From Kiowa
Back in September, 1893, The Medicine Lodge Cresset, out of Medicine Lodge, Kansas, dated 22 September 22, 1893, Friday, on page 2, had some interesting tidbits of information and history concerning the Cherokee Strip and the Land Run of 1893. This part concerns the Strip from Kiowa, Kansas in to the Cherokee Strip near Alva and other little communities that sprang up near the border of Oklahoma and Kansas. The honest citizen seemed to play the part of a sucker while the leading star parts were acted by the "sooner," the rascal and the bully.
They reported the rush to the strip from Kiowa, 16 September 1893, Saturday was exciting. Kiowa had her share of this boomer population. The crowds for the last run had been variously estimated at from 5,000 to 10,000. It was thought the number who rushed over the South line of Barber County was not far from 15,000.
A number of "sooners" slipped through Friday night but some were caught after a nine mile chase. At 11:53 o'clock a restless son of Africa accidentally discharged his gun, and the waiting crowd mistaken it for the signal rushed pell mell across a narrow gulch and scattered all over the plain which spread out as far as the eye could measure in a panorama of green. The crowd had got fairly under way before Capt. H. H. Hardie, of the 3rd Cavalry, four minutes later, gave the official signal.
The negro was captured and held until the last of the boomers had disappeared. In the start Vernon Macy, a boomer from Kiowa County, was unhorsed and his shoulder dislocated. Another boomer was also seriously injured in a runaway.
The race was made one very conceivable manner on foot, astride race horses, in carts, buggies, lumber wagons, stage coaches, tallyhos, bicycles and the Santa Fe train. One lady bravely rode the cow catcher of the engine which pulled the first train into the Strip. Alva, the county eat of County M, twenty miles south of Kiowa, was the objective point for about 2,000. The Santa Fe ran two sections of ten coaches and flat cars each loaded to the bumpers' and 300 others made the race on and behind fast horses. The prize for the test of speed between horses and steam was the choice business lots in Alva, and the horses won by 20 minutes.
Some of the accounts were lurid enough in their style to suit the most sensational and yet so inaccurate as to be absolutely worthless if the reader was seeking for actual information. But while a great many blood curdling incidents were narrated that never occurred, it is true that half the suffering entailed by this opening will never be told.
They also report the booth system may have been well intended but it was a foolish regulation in its inception and a bungling farce in its execution. It harassed and hindered every honest man and woman who was really entitled to a claim or town lot in the promised land.
Instead of being a protection against "soonerism" it served to furnish certificates of character to dishonest invaders. It entailed untold hardships on the poor, the weak and guileless, while it afforded abundant opportunities for blackmail and boodle to unprincipled officials and their scoundrelly abettors.
The reporter stated during a two days he watched the booths of Orlando, he never in the same length of time seen so much petty fraud and gouging of the unwary. Lines were formed supposedly going toward the booths. Then some red nosed minion of the administration would go out along the line and under his orders the weary and date throng would march and counter march, sometimes facing towards the booth, sometimes the other way. Why they marched or why they turned about nobody knew. While the crowd marched and counter marched and performed such military evolutions as Hoke's subaltern might happen to direct such persons a happened to have a stand in with the clerks and guards and a little extra change which they were willing to place where it would do the most good were quietly walking in the back way and registering with pleasant dispatch.
Among the victims of this sort of official bunco business was a poor old fellow wearing the insignia of the G.A.R. and whose legs had proceeded him by several years to the grave. He had been waiting in the broiling sun, the fierce hot winds and stifling dust for two days, he said, and was apparently no nearer the booth than at the beginning. He did not seem to understand the why in the case and probably didn't later.
If the booth system was bad, the run was little better. The fellows who attempted to obey instructions of the officers in charge almost universally got left. The honest citizen seemed to play the part of a sucker while the leading star parts were acted by the "sooner," the rascal and the bully.
Twenty thousand persons, young, middle-aged and old, white, yellow, black and tan colored rushed madly away over the prairie, down steep bluffs and across deep ravines when a misstep would cost their lives or a broken limb, or rode on cow-catchers, hung on brake rods, stood jammed on car platforms for the chance of getting a town lot in a town where there could not be over three hundred lots at the outside of any considerable value.
Nature added its share of misery for the wild-eyed settler. For weeks no rain had fallen on the thirsty soil. The water courses had degenerated to dry ravines and stagnant pools. Water became an article of commerce and its possession an evidence of plutocracy. The dust laden winds abolished the color line except that the African had a slight advantage over the Caucasian in the matter of complexion. Dirt was the universal condition and a clean shirt was a badge of aristocracy and an unseemly attempt to put on airs that was resented by the common populace with derision.
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