Page:The Indian Dispossessed.pdf/281

The Indian Dispossessed with their stoves, and chairs, and babies, and chickens,—but what a changed lot from the expectant, excited boomers of a few days ago! Worn out, dirty, disgusted; supplies gone, money gone, hope gone, and cursing their luck. Many corner stores, if the orators succeed in getting "back home," are going to hear caustic lectures on the mistakes of the Government.

So this motley crowd of disappointed boomers works its passage back to Io way, and Illi noiay , and to all the other ways which had known them before the great fever to get something for nothing took possession of their senses. Some—good sports, good losers—laugh at their own folly, and thank Heaven for returning sanity. Others stare into the face of ruin—they had burned their bridges behind them, and are stranded, perhaps with families, in a strange land. And the families? The strangers' corner in many a Kansas cemetery can show little mounds—and sometimes larger ones—made in September, 1893.

And what was it all about? Did they want land to cultivate, land on which to establish homes?

Not one in ten, for not one in ten of the winners made homes of their winnings more than long enough to get their patents and sell out.

It was the value in this land above the Government price —the value which the Indian had given up in his bargain with the Great Father—that 260