by Tim Slessor
***
Fights between herdsman and cultivator go back at least to the Old Testament. Now, with his wire, the farmer on the plains had the means of defending what was his. The cattlemen fought back with wire-cutters, bloody intimidation and lawsuits. But, in the end, the sod-busters won; there were just too many of them. Indeed, one might say that barbed wire had at least as much to do with “the winning of the West” as did all the Colts and Winchesters that ever fired a shot. One might also say that barbed wire provides one of the best examples in history of a simple technology changing geography forever; it re-drew the map physically, economically and socially.
Another seemingly simple devise, viewed from this distance in time, is the sod-busting plow. Adaptations of it are now used in mechanized farming all over the world. But before the mid-nineteenth century the plow had not changed very much since Biblical times. Thomas Jefferson, who used his ingenuity on everything from the Declaration of Independence to a folding bed, had ideas for the plow’s improvement. He designed a wooden mold-board with an iron tip; he sent the thing to Paris and won a gold medal at an agricultural show. Later, seeking further improvements, others came up with a steel mold-board with sometimes a sharp vertical disc up front. It was heavy and, when breaking virgin soil, it needed two or three oxen to pull it. Because of this and its cost, it did not immediately catch on out on the plains. But when the homesteaders found that the plows they had brought with them did no more than scratch the surface, they had no choice but to save up (or go into debt) to buy one.
The plow took some pulling. Tractors costing $250,000 or more do the job now, sometimes dragging 8-12 plows at once. In the biggest of these “rigs” the driver sits high up in an air-conditioned cab with power steering, power brakes, ten forward gears and a stereo tape deck. As well as his cell-phone, he has a two-way radio to keep in direct touch with his mate who may be driving a similar “rig” on the far side of a 640-acre field. And he’ll have an ice-cooler containing another American invention: iced tea. His radio will be tuned to keep up with hog prices in Kansas City, wheat futures in Chicago, what is for lunch today at the local high school, and who has been discharged from the local hospital. Plus, of course, the weather.
Back in the early days, it was soon recognized that a farming family on the plains needed more than the statutory 160 acres. At the same time, the ancient belief that cultivation brought an increase in rainfall was given formal support by Washington. The popular slogan was “Rain follows the plow”. Trees encouraged rain too. So the Timber Culture Act of 1873 combined the two targets of giving the settler more land and of increasing the rainfall. This gave a further 160 acres to a homesteader if he undertook to plant trees on 40 acres of his new land. Any number of people hurried down to the local land office to claim more land. Some even got round to planting some young trees, if they could find any. Others stuck a few twigs in the ground. Others didn’t bother either way. After all, if there was anything to this rain theory, why not let your neighbor put in the trees? The resultant clouds were as likely to break over your land as over his. A humorist of the day suggested that any disputes might be settled in a Court of Nebulous Claims.
Strangely, a few years after the passing of that act, there really was an improvement in the rainfall. The seven years ending in 1885 were unusually moist, and even the skeptics had to admit that something, somewhere, was making a difference. If it was not the almost non-existent planting of trees, then perhaps it was the discharge of “earth electricity” which allegedly flowed up and down the steel rails of the newly built railroads. The professional rain-makers denied both these possibilities and put it about that it was all due to their own scientific powers. They were persuasive. For a handsome fee from a syndicate of farmers, they would fire small cannons and play about with lengths of copper wire and hand-cranked dynamos. Preachers simply explained that the better weather was the result of prayer and the considerate response of the Almighty. The fact was that the Great Plains, like most parts of the world, have a naturally varying cycle of climate. But in those days, climatology was no more understood than electricity.
In time there came better years for those who earlier had struggled just to survive. Not only had they had learnt how to farm on the plains, but, to their relief, the price of wheat was rising; demand was growing. In both the US and Europe, industrialization meant that there now were urban millions who had to be fed; industry and its workers depended on wheat and meat as much as on iron ore and coal. On top of this, Europe had suffered several poor harvests and was being denied its usual imports from Russia: trouble between Russia and Turkey had closed the wheat ports of the Crimea. So prairie wheat went up to more than $1 a bushel (a bushel being 60 lbs.) On their increased income, some of the settlers could now afford to move out of their houses of “prairie marble” into something bigger, better and built of wood.
Some historians suggest that, prompted by the needs of the sod-busters out on the plains, the last two decades of the century saw an agricultural revolution at least as profound as the one that had occurred a hundred years earlier in the British Isles. They may be right. By some mechanical equivalent of Darwinism, the more efficient contrivances survived to prosper, together with the people who made them. Some of the manufacturing names from that era are still very much in business; one thinks of McCormick, Case, Deere and Massey-Harris. And still there is the ever-present symbol of the plains: the wind-pump. Wind, after all, is the one resource of which the Western farmer was (and is) never short. Indeed, in settling the plains, wind-pumps were as important as barbed wire, or those sod-busting plows, or of course the railroads.
Techniques had changed too. Above all came the realization that “dry farming” was the answer to the problem of low rainfall. At its simplest, two years’ precipitation (rain and snow) was/is used to grow one year’s crop. That way, the soil absorbs enough moisture (what is not lost to evaporation) over two years to sustain one crop. Of course it means that, at any one time, half a farmer’s land is unseeded, or lying fallow. And that, in turn, means that a farming family needs at least a section of land (640 acres or 1 square mile) to begin to make even a meager living.
In the celebrated Rogers and Hammerstein musical, Oklahoma, there is the chorus that tells us that “the wavin’ wheat can sure smell sweet when the wind comes right behind the rain”. But the truth about Oklahoma, one of the last parts of the Great Plains to be settled, was rather different. While there was never much doubt about the constancy of the wind, there came years when the rains might fail and then the farmers’ wheat would shrivel before if got anywhere near wavin’ or smellin’ sweet. But the first home-steaders into those parts could not know that...
By the late 1880s, most of the Great Plains were “pretty much settled out”; such virgin lands as were left were either pockets of infertility that the whites did not want or they were treaty-lands occupied by the tribes. Nowhere was this more apparent than across most of what is today’s Oklahoma. On maps, this last, vast stretch of land was labeled as Indian Territory or sometimes, more cynically, as the (as yet) Unassigned Lands. In effect, this was one enormous reservation of 50 million acres (about 300 x 250 miles). For several decades the native inhabitants, some of whom were known as the Five Civilized Tribes, had been well behaved and peaceful; some had even become farmers. But once it became apparent that they were sitting on land, particularly along the valleys of the Washita, the Red and the Arkansas rivers, that the whites now wanted, the Indians’ good behavior did not count. Indeed, untroubled by any last-minute qualms, in March 1889 President Cleveland signed the aptly named Indian Appropriation Act under which, with a minimum of consultation, two of the tribes (the rest would be forced to follow within a few years) were compulsorily bought out for a few million dollars.
Now, with the land appropriately “appropriated”, there was the question of how the government should parcel it out among the thousands of hopeful homesteader
s. It was decided that, held back by posses of quickly appointed marshals, all settlers would be barred until a specifically appointed moment. Accordingly, at exactly noon on 22 April 1889, guns were fired simultaneously at various points around the long perimeter of the “new” land. This was the signal for thousands of men to leap to their horses or buggies or bicycles to race for the choicest pieces of land: first come, first served. Within hours, marker stakes were being hammered down as far as 40 miles “inland” from that start line. Within a day, over 10,000 settlers had claimed nearly 2 million acres. This was the first of Oklahoma’s Land Rushes. In one afternoon, a tent-town calling itself Guthrie sprang up; by nightfall it had a population of over 5,000. By the next morning it had declared itself to be the capital of the whole territory.
As one might expect, there were a number of men who had secretly “jumped the gun”; they had collared some of the best locations. Among these “sooners” (as they became known) were some of those policing marshals. And, as one might further expect, platoons of disputatious lawyers came swooping quickly onto the scene.
Over the next decade, as more and more Indian lands were appropriated, there were more land rushes, each as hectic as the one before. By the end of the century, with a population of nearly a third of a million, Oklahoma Territory was said to be “all filled up”. Within a few years, the place had become a state with Oklahoma City as its capital. And, to this day, the state’s citizens take pride in being known as Sooners.
New-fangled equipment: a reaper-binder
Now, it had long been more than just whispered that the grasslands along the south-western margins of the Great Plains had a particularly uncertain climate. Yes, sure, there would be the occasional droughty times, but, hell, these were anomalies that would pass. After all, everyone knew that rain followed the plow. So, the more settlement, the more rain! Anyway, wheat prices across the world were going up. Indeed, in the years during and after the Great War they more than doubled. Drawn on by those prices and, as always, the need to pay off the banks (who were charging usurious rates on mortgages and loans for tractors, wind-pumps, barbed wire and a dozen other bits of machinery), farmers out on the western fringes of Oklahoma became ever more vigorous in their methods. Why run cattle on your land when you could plow it up for wheat? What was the point in wasting a recently harvested field by putting it to fallow? Why bother with those new-fangled theories about crop rotation, windbreaks and shelterbelts?
The fact is that some farmers and their plows had been tempted further west than they had any right to go. Those droughty years were not anomalies: they came back; they were part of the climatic cycle. The native grasses of the south-western plains were never meant to be turned over; their deep and tangled roots had held the fragile soil together for millennia. But the sharp-nosed plow changed all that. When the drought years came back in the early 1930s, the topsoil was literally rootless. Dry and friable, it just blew away in the wind: millions of tons of it. Sometimes visibility was down to a few yards. The skies in distant Chicago were darkened. In far-away New York people remarked on the beautiful sunsets.
While western Oklahoma was the epicenter of what became known as the Dust Bowl, bordering regions in other states―Kansas, Nebraska, Colorado and northern Texas―were not much less devastated. Hundreds, then thousands of farms were abandoned. Banks went bust. Towns became derelict. Old people and children died on the choking dust. In three years, more than 2 million people abandoned the country of the Dust Bowl. Destitute, the Okies (as they became known) piled their possessions into old jalopies and puttered off west to look for work in California. But these were the Depression years; there was no work. Many of those refugees never recovered; they died paupers.
With time, of course, techniques changed. They had to. Above all, there was the growing realization that “dry farming” was, at least, a partial answer to the problem of low and chancy rainfall. At its simplest, two years’ rain (and snow) is used to grow one year’s crop. After any “precipitation”, the soil is quickly turned―to hold the moisture against evaporation. So, in most years, the soil will absorb enough water over two years to sustain one year’s crop. Of course it means that, at any one time, half a farmer’s land is unproductive. And that, in turn, means that a farming family needs at least a section of land (640 acres or 1 square mile) to begin to make a reasonable living. So it is not surprising that, over the last 50-60 years, farms right across the Great Plains have become much bigger. Yes, there are still family farms, but they are becoming ever fewer. Increasingly, by means of amalgamation, partnerships, rentals, sales and purchasing, the farms have become more and more extensive. Increasingly, corporate farming seems to be the rule.
As I have already hinted, by far the quickest way to appreciate the immensity of what has been achieved on the Great Plains over the last 150 years is to fly from, say, Omaha to Denver. Get yourself a window seat and then, for 500 miles, you will be looking across the slow heart of the continent and over what is undoubtedly one of the broadest and most productive granaries in the world. Yet, back when Abraham Lincoln signed that Homestead Bill, this was still buffalo country. On the Great Plains, the homesteader and his family deserve the accolades. Without really knowing it, they tamed what many had called the Wild West. They, more than anyone, began the process of settlement, of home-making, of domestication. From mean and difficult beginnings in their soddies, they had hung on - always hoping. They made the difference. Everyone and everything else followed, from that day to this.
***
We sure must have been dumb to have come out here, but we soon got smart enough to survive.
The reported comment of an old-timer reflecting on his early days of homesteading on the Great Plains
The West is America, only more so...
Wallace Stegner
Acknowledgements
Way back at the start, in my Preface, I implied that an important motive in my writing this book was a wish to put together a homage, a sort of “thank you”, to those many Westerners who, for nearly 50 years, have always made me welcome. So, now that I have just about finished the thing, I hope that all those warm and genial friends will regard this book as an informal recognition of my gratitude. But, of course, besides that rather general expression of indebtedness, I should also be more specific in terms of those people who have very directly helped me with encouragement and/or many of the actual details in this book.
I owe a very special debt to John Gottschalk and his wife, Carmen, of Omaha. I have known John since he was 19 and working his way through college; 40 years on he is the recently retired CEO of the Omaha World-Herald, and a whole lot else besides. He and Carmen always look after me from the moment I land in Omaha; they are my anchors. John was one of the first people to tell me, on the strength of a couple of chapters, that I ought to persevere. And there is one other person in the US to whom I am particularly grateful: Larry Pointer, the author of the first significant book about Butch Cassidy; he has always been most generous in allowing me to pick his brains and seek his advice.
Among other American friends with whom I have been (and will continue to be) in touch for help of one kind or another, I must list Mike Ambrosino of Boston’s WGBH-TV; Arlene Buffington of Mitchell; Don and Diane Cooper of Billings; Bob Edwards, lately of Buffalo’s Gatchell Museum; Doug Ganz and his mother, Eleanor, both of Lincoln; Dorset Graves of Chadron State College (he was my boss for the year I spent working in Nebraska); Donna Grimm of Lincoln; Jerry Jasmer and other staff at the Little Big Horn battle site; Jerry Jasmer of Barbara and Earl Madsen of Wyoming’s TA Ranch; Gerald One Feather of the Oglala Sioux; Emerson Scott Jnr. of Dayton; Walter Scott of Omaha; Bob and Donna Swaim of Tucson; Colin Taylor of Casper and Hole-in-the-Wall; Melanie Wallace of WGBH-TV; Jeff and Sandra Wood of Golden, and Charlie and Suzi Wright of Lincoln. I must also thank the staff of the Visitors’ Center at the Little Big Horn battle site, the staff at Wyoming�
��s State Archives in Cheyenne, and the staffs of both the Nebraska and Kansas State Historical Societies in Lincoln and Topeka respectively.
Now I must turn to friends who, sadly, are no longer with us. First must come Jim Hull; he was the managing editor of the Laramie Boomerang when I, a young and very innocent Brit, called to ask his advice just 50 years ago; he was my first real Westerner and, as such, an initial inspiration. Then there were Retta and Glenn Elliott (Gran’ma and Gran’pa) who adopted the four of us during the year we lived in Nebraska. Later there was Alistair Cooke, who took a good deal of wry but always encouraging amusement at this Englishman’s interest in Western history; working with him for nearly a year, I learnt more than I can tell. Later still came Bob Murray: he was a retired National Park historian, and what he didn’t know about the Indian wars and the country of Wyoming’s Powder River was not worth knowing; he must have given me days, even weeks, of his time. Then there’s Dale and Margie Starks of the wheat-cutting crew. More recently, in Buffalo, Emerson Scott always allowed me unlimited access to his wonderful library of Western history; he also gave me a bed on many occasions and drove me many guided miles in his pick-up. To this day I get a wonderful welcome from his wife, Ann, every time I pull into Buffalo.
In England, I must thank my publisher James Ferguson, who, since he took on this book, has shown a sharp interest in its development. I have been very fortunate in his choice of an editor to work with me: Brenda Stones has been firm yet understanding in her advice and her occasional criticisms; the book is hugely better for that input. Then there’s Rob White of Norfolk, Nick Ross of Notting Hill Gate and Moira Lovegrove of ING-Barings Bank. Also, I am very grateful to a near neighbour, right here in Wimbledon: Janice Everett understands the mysteries of computers. I know nothing of these things. Without her frequent “rescues”, this book might never have happened.