Page:Bohemians in Central Kansas.pdf/9

 settlement of “Empire,” a log granary and two ricks of bound oats. All that was left was our log house, a wagon and a dug well, I am not sure whether the bucket was burned or not. The wagon carried me to Kansas the next spring.

The loss of my property drove me to teaching school—my first school—and I furnished my log cabin for the schoolhouse. As I taught that school I did some things besides—I did some thinking as I read my weekly papers, “Saline County Post,” “Pleasant Hill News,” and “Pokrok,” a Cesky casopis published in Cleveland, Ohio, and “Pokrok Zapadu” (Progress of the West), published in Omaha, Neb. That winter of 1873–’74 was hard also on the laboring class in the cities of the United States. So I undertook to solve the problem of how to better conditions for myself and as many others as possible. I had but eighty acres of a homestead, and that was because Congress had given all odd-numbered sections of land to the Burlington & Missouri River R. R. Company, so the settlers were given only one-half as much as where there was no land grant. We had preempted our land before Congress allowed ex-soldiers to take an additional eighty for a homestead. Later the land was all taken up, for I worked hard to settle my fellow countrymen on government land. So I still had a right to an additional eighty besides one hundred and sixty acres under the timber act, two hundred and forty acres in all, wherever I could find it. Many were agitating for western Nebraska, but I dreaded it and preferred to go south and only as far west as I had to, to find a location for a new Bohemian settlement.

I bought a section map of Kansas, discovered the land offices of the United States government, and when spring came and my school was out I led a caravan of covered wagons, on May 5, 1874, in the direction of Kansas. We crossed the line at its intersection of the sixth principal meridian, going through Belleville to Concordia. There we stopped to examine plats at the government land office, but there was a grab game played there. I had to hire a lawyer to get any attention. I spent a few dollars for plats, but was repulsed, and not finding sufficient government land for a colony, went on to Salina, Kan. The south wind blew so hard every day and night that I lost all my followers but one young single man, or rather boy, who got off of one of the retreating wagons and went with me just for the grub, and the love of roving adventure.

Nothing could turn me from carrying out my plan—nothing less than death. At the Salina land office I found fair and gentlemanly treatment. I could have found land enough for myself in Saline county, but not enough for a colony without buying, so I did not investigate that chance. I bought three or four plats of townships that had railroads in them—Kansas Pacific, and Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe—and went to examine the lands. The eastern part of Ellsworth county, that I passed through, seemed too rough for farming. On May 12, 1874, I passed through the town of Ellsworth. I don’t know whether any of its citizens made out the writing on my wagon cover or not. It read: “Ceská Osada.” Those words, meaning “Bohemian Settlement,” conceived first in my brain, were later put on canvas, and afterwards worked into reality—a grand success. May 14, 1874, I arrived at Wilson. Jacob Sackman, an old veteran, was the first man to give me a welcome. But later I found comrades of my own regiment, and company, even, in Ellsworth county. So I decided to seek no further.