Land Of The Burnt Thigh: A Lively Story of Women Homesteaders On The South Dakota Frontier

IX

IX THE OPENING OF THE ROSEBUD T HE settling of those western lands was as elemental as the earth, and no phase of its settlement was as dramatic as the opening of the Rosebud. Homesteading was now the biggest movement in America. We were entering a great period of land development running its course between 1909 and our entrance into the Wodd War in 1917. The people were land crazy. The western fever became an epidemic that spread like a prairie fire. Day by day we watched the vast, voluntary migration of a people. Men with families to support, frail women with no one to help them, few of them with money enough to carry them through, took the chance, with the odds against them. I have seen men appear with their families, ten dollars in 143 144 LAND OF THE BURNT THIGH their pockets, or only five after the filing fee on the land was paid. I have seen them sleep on the prairie, get odd jobs here and there until they could throw up a shelter out of scrap lumber, and slowly get a foothold, often becoming substantial citizens of a community they helped to build. Free land! Free land! It was like the tune piped by the Pied Piper. "This is the chance for the poor man," I wrote in The Wand. "When the supply of free land is exhausted the poor man cannot hope to own land. . . . If the moneyed powers get hold of this cheap land as an investment, they will force the price beyond the grasp of the masses. . . . The West is the reserve upon which the future growth and food supply of the nation must depend." Ida Mary said that I was running to land as a Missourian did to mules, but The Wand was fast becoming identified with the land movement. As the homesteaders flowed in a great sea out of the towns and cities into the West, one wondered at their courage. There was not the hope which inspires a gold rush, the possibility of a gold strike which may bring sudden wealth and ease. The road was long, the only likely signs of achievement an extra room on the shack, a few more acres of ground turned under. And-eventual security ! That was it, security. A piece of ground that belonged to them, on which they could plant their feet, permanency. In answer to that cry for land there came another proclamation from the President, Theodore Roosevelt. Another great tract of land, the great Rosebud Indian Reservation, THE OPENING OF THE ROSEBUD 145 with a million acres of homesteads, was to be thrown open. A lottery with 1500 square miles of territory as the sweepstakes and 100,000 people playing its wheel of fortune. Trying to describe its size and sweep and significance, I find myself, in the vernacular of the range, plumb flabbergasted . Of course, there were some among the homesteaders on the Lower Brule who found the grass greener on the Rosebud, and wanted to throw up their claims and move on to new ground; but the government informed them, somewhat grimly, that they could prove up where they were, or not at all. And I can understand their restlessness. To this day I never hear of some new frontier being developed without pricking up my ears and quivering like a circus horse when he hears a band play. There are some desert products that can't be rooted out-sagebrush and cactus and the hold of the open spaces. The Rosebud Opening was one of the most famous lotteries of them all. The Rosebud reservation lay in Tripp County, across White River from the Brule. Its conversion into homesteads meant an immediate income for the United States Treasury, but according to a recent law, all monies received from the sale of the lands were to be deposited to the credit of the Indians belonging to and having tribal rights on the reservation, the funds thus acquired to be used by Congress for the education, support and civilization of the Indians. The name Rosebud was emblazoned across the nation, after the government proclamation, in the newspapers, in railroad pamphlets, on public buildings. As usual, the rail- 146 LAND OF THE BURNT THIGH roads played a major part in aiding prospective settlers to reach the registration pointst a half-dozen little western villages. The frontier town of...