The Mammoth Book of the West

by Jon E. Lewis

  A major reason why pioneers wanted money was to buy, or rent, the agricultural machinery that would make their lives less back-breaking, and maximize the profitability of their land. Reapers, threshers and grain separators appeared in a bewildering variety of models in the wheat country, the progenitor of them all being Virginian Cyrus McCormick’s revolutionary mechanical reaper, invented in 1831. By 1880 combine harvesters were so advanced that they cut the wheat and automatically tied it into sheaths. In 1840 it took around 233 hours of human labour to produce 100 bushels of wheat; in 1900, thanks to mechanization, this had dropped to 108.

  With luck, a pioneer would endure, and come to prosperity. But only with luck. A Kansas folksong sums up the disillusion of many a homesteader:

  How happy am I on my government claim

  Where I’ve nothing to lose and nothing to gain,

  Nothing to eat and nothing to wear,

  Nothing from nothing is honest and square.

  But here I am stuck, and here I must stay,

  My money’s all gone and I can’t get away,

  There’s nothing will make a man hard and profane

  Like starving to death on a government claim.

  Those who stuck it out were joined by others, for the settlers kept coming. Many were westering Americans from the Old Northwest and the Mississippi Valley. A million from these regions moved out onto the plains in a single decade. Some were descendants of the farmers who had hewn out the first American frontier back beneath the shadow of the Appalachians.

  A significant number were Black farmers from the South and Texas, tired of prejudice, which had significantly increased with the end of Reconstruction in 1877. Henry Adams and Benjamin “Pap” Singleton organized an “Exodus” of Black people to Kansas and points west in the hope that they might find liberty. White plantation owners, anxious at the loss of cheap labour, hired gangs of thugs to stop them. One Black “Exoduster” had his hands chopped off by Whites who said, “Now go to Kansas to work!” Generally, the intimidation did not work. In one year alone an estimated 20,000 to 40,000 penniless Black men, women and children reached Kansas. They came up the Mississippi by boat, or made the long, slow walk up the Chisholm Trail. A Black community was founded at Nicodemus by Edwin McCabe, which thrived until the railroad passed it by. McCabe became the state auditor of Kansas, and thus the first Black man to hold a major political office in the West.

  The whys and hows of the Black Exodus were cogently explained by Pap Singleton when called before a Senate Select Committee investigating the phenomenon on 17 April 1880 in Washington DC:

  Q. [Senator Windom]: When did you change your home from Tennessee to Kansas?

  A. [Benjamin Singleton]: I have been going there for the last six or seven years, sir.

  Q. Going between Tennessee and Kansas, at different times?

  A. Yes, sir; several times.

  Q. Well, tell us about it.

  A. I have been fetching out people; I believe I fetched out 7,432 people.

  Q. You have brought out 7,432 people from the South to Kansas?

  A. Yes, sir; brought and sent.

  Q. That is, they came out to Kansas under your influence?

  A. Yes, sir; I was the cause of it.

  Q. How long have you been doing that – ever since 1869?

  A. Yes, sir; ever since 1869.

  Q. Did you go out there yourself in 1869, before you commenced sending them out?

  A. No, sir.

  Q. How did you happen to send them out?

  A. The first cause, do you mean, of them going?

  Q. Yes. What was the cause of your going out, and in the first place how did you happen to go there, or to send these people there?

  A. Well, my people, for the want of land – we needed land for our children – and their disadvantages – that caused my heart to grieve and sorrow; pity for my race, sir, that was coming down, instead of going up – that caused me to go to work for them. I sent out there perhaps in ’66 – perhaps so; or in ’65, anyway – my memory don’t recollect which; and they brought back tolerable favorable reports; then I jacked up 300 or 400, and went into Southern Kansas, and found it was a good country, and I thought Southern Kansas was congenial to our nature, sir; and I formed a colony there, and bought about 1,000 acres of ground – the colony did – my people.

  Q. And they went upon it and settled there?

  A. Yes, sir; they went and settled there.

  Q. Were they men with some means or without means?

  A. I never carried none there without means.

  Q. They had some means to start with?

  A. Yes; I prohibited my people leaving their country and going there without they had money – some money to start with and go on with a while.

  Q. You were in favor of their going there if they had some means?

  A. Yes, and not staying at home.

  Q. Tell us how these people are getting on in Kansas?

  A. I am glad to tell you, sir.

  Q. Have they any property now?

  A. Yes; I have carried some people in there that when they got there they didn’t have 50 cents left, and now they have got in my colony – Singleton colony – a house, nice cabins, their milch cows, and pigs, and sheep, perhaps a span of horses, and trees before their yeards, and some 3 or 4 or 10 acres broken up, and all of them has got little houses that I carried there. They didn’t go under no relief assistance; they went on their own resources; and when they went in there first the country was not overrun with them; you see they could get good wages; the country was not overstocked with people; they went to work, and I never helped them as soon as I put them on the land.

  Q. Well, they have been coming continually, and adding from time to time to your colony these few years past, have they?

  A. Yes, sir; I have spent, perhaps, nearly $600 flooding the country with circulars.

  Q. You have sent the circulars yourself, have you?

  A. Yes, sir; all over these United States.

  Q. Did you send them into other Southern States besides Tennessee?

  A. Oh, yes, sir.

  Q. Did you do that at the instance of Governor St John and others in Kansas?

  A. Oh, no, sir; no White men. This was gotten up by Colored men in purity and confidence; not a political Negro was in it; they would want to pilfer and rob at the cents before they got the dollars. Oh, no, it was the muscle of the arm, the men that worked that we wanted.

  Q. Well, tell us all about it.

  A. These men would tell all their grievances to me in Tennessee – the sorrows of their heart. You know I was an undertaker there in Nashville, and worked in the shop. Well, actually, I would have to go and bury their fathers and mothers. You see we have the same heart and feelings as any other race and nation. (The land is free, and it is nobody’s business, if there is land enough, where the people go. I put that in my people’s heads.) Well, that man would die, and I would bury him; and the next morning maybe a woman would go to that man [meaning the landlord], and she would have six or seven children, and he would say to her, “Well, your husband owed me before he died,” and they would say that to every last one of them, “You owe me.” Suppose he would? Then he would say, “You must go to some other place; I cannot take care of you.” Now, you see, that is something I would take notice of. That woman had to go out, and these little children was left running through the streets, and the next place you would find them in a disorderly house, and their children in the State’s prison.

  Well, now, sir, you will find that I have a charter here. You will find that I called on the White people in Tennessee about that time. I called conventions about it, and they sat with me in my conventions, and, “Old man,” they said, “you are right.” The White people said, “You are right; take your people away.” And let me tell you, it was the White people – the ex-governor of the State felt like I did and they said to me, “You have tooken a great deal on to yourself, but if these Negroes, instead of deceiving
one another and running for office, would take the same idea that you have in your head, you will be a people.”

  I then went out to Kansas, and advised them all to go to Kansas; and, sir, they are going to leave the Southern country. The Southern country is out of joint. The blood of a White man runs through my veins. That is congenial, you know, to my nature. That is my choice. Right emphatically, I tell you today, I woke up the millions right through me! The great God of glory has worked in me. I have had open-air interviews with the living spirit of God for my people; and we are going to leave the South. We are going to leave it if there ain’t an alteration and signs of change. I am going to advise the people who left that country [Kansas] to go back.

  Q. What do you mean by a change?

  A. Well, I am not going to stand bulldozing and half pay and all those things. Gentlemen, allow me to tell you the truth; it seems to me that they have picked out the Negroes from the Southern country to come here and testify who are in good circumstances and own their homes and not the poor ones who don’t study their own interests. Let them go and pick up the men that has to walk when they goes, and not those who have money.

  There is good White men in the Southern country, but it ain’t the minority [majority]; they can’t do nothing; the bulldozers has got possession of the country, and they have got to go in there and stop them; if they don’t the last Colored man will leave them. I see Colored men testifying to a positive lie, for they told me out there all their interests were in Louisiana and Mississippi. Said I, “You are right to protect your own country,” and they would tell me, “I am obliged to do what I am doing.” Of course I have done the same, but I am clear footed.

  Q. Now you say that during these years you have been getting up this colony you have spent, yourself, some $600 in circulars, and in sending them out; where did you send them, Mr Singleton?

  A. Into Mississippi, Alabama, South Carolina, Georgia, Kentucky, Virginia, North Carolina, Texas, Tennessee, and all those countries.

  Q. To whom did you send them; how were they circulated?

  A. Every man that would come into my country, and I could get a chance, I would put one in his hand, and the boys that started from my country on the boats, and the porters in the cars. That is the way I circulated them.

  Q. Did you send any out by mail?

  A. I think I sent some perhaps to North Carolina by mail – I think I did. I sent them out by people, you see.

  Q. Yes; by Colored people, generally?

  A. Some White people, too. There was Mrs Governor Brown, the first Governor Brown of Tennessee – Mrs Sanders, she was a widow, and she married the governor. He had 30 on his place. I went to him, and he has given me advice. And Ex-Governor Brown, he is there too.

  Q. You say your circulars were sent all over these States?

  A. Yes, sir; to all of ’em.

  Q. Did you ever hear from them; did anybody ever write to you about them?

  A. Oh, yes.

  Q. And you attribute this movement to the information you gave in your circulars?

  A. Yes, sir; I am the whole cause of the Kansas immigration!

  Q. You take all that responsibility on yourself?

  A. I do, and I can prove it; and I think I have done a good deal of good, and I feel relieved!

  Q. You are proud of your work?

  A. Yes, sir; I am! [Uttered emphatically.]

  As the number of Black settlers in Kansas grew, the state passed laws forbidding them to settle within town limits. Many moved on to the mountain states and, especially, Oklahoma. Between 1890 and 1910, 25 Black communities were formed in Oklahoma, including the city of Langston, where Edwin McCabe – one of those who had moved on – was instrumental in forming a Black university.

  More numerous than the “Exodusters” were the immigrants from outside the USA, from Europe, Canada (nearly 400,000 Canadians settled on the plains between 1880 and 1883), and from Russia. Usually foreigners settled in the northern states, where the climate reminded them of home, and close to others of their nationality. Sometimes whole communities were transplanted from Europe to the plains, like the pacifist German-speaking Mennonites from Russia who feared conscription. The Mennonites brought with them Turkey Red, a hard winter wheat that could survive plains weather, which transformed agriculture on the northern plains. (Another crucial immigrant import was the alfalfa seed that Wendelin Grimm brought with him from Bavaria.) At “Runnymede” in Kansas, promoter Ned Turnely set up a hotel for the dissolute sons of the British aristocracy, where they might learn frontiering and the open-air life; in fact they played tennis and ran to the hounds, chasing coyotes instead of foxes.

  A homestead in the West was an appealing idea to many women, but no frontier was harder on them than the plains. They arrived as wives – sometimes by a form of mail order – and built homes, and endured drudgery and childbirth and a wind that cracked the skin of the face. For a bride from the East, the Great Plains came as a rude shock. Julia Gage, a native of Syracuse, New York, married Frank Carpenter in February 1882 and accompanied him to their homestead claim in Lamoure County, Dakota Territory (now North Dakota). A night in a frontier hotel in Ellendale proved an uncivilized tribulation:

  The landlord showed us up stairs to a small room just large enough to contain two beds, one at the foot of the other. The foot bed contained a man, we were to occupy the other. The next room to ours was separated simply by studding, no lath, plaster or anything to shield us from the view of the man in that bed. So on through the house we could see the different occupants of the rooms. The windows in our room were broken, the door was minus. The landlord set the lamp on the floor (as there was no stand, chair, nothing but two beds). I asked him to take it down and we undressed in the dark, I simply taking off my dress and shoes and putting on my ulster. In the room the air was stifling. In the morning the man in the bed at the foot of ours and the one in the room adjoining seemed afraid to get up knowing a woman was so near. So I made the first move, slipping off my ulster and putting on my dress. There were no bathing arrangements in our room, each person washed in the office out of a tin wash dish, and one towel served for all. Soon after entering the dining room, a man, evidently the one who occupied the bed at the foot of ours, and who lay with his head covered with the bedding, entered the room.

  On the tortuous road to their claim, they encountered mosquitoes.

  With all the pain I ever suffered, I never endured such agony as I did that night. The mosquitoes numbered millions. The coulies were full of them. I wore a broad brimmed hat with the lower part tucked in the ulster, but it seemed hardly the least protection. I was bitten over my whole body not only through my gloves but through three thicknesses, ulster, dress, and wrapper sleeves; the miserable insects even found a small hole in the side of my shoes . . . But what I endured was nothing in comparison to what Frank went through, he having neither gloves, netting or any protection. Every few minutes he would jump out of the wagon, slapping the mosquitoes off from the mules, whose sides were so covered with them that their color could not have been told . . . Could we have driven fast, the little breeze thus produced would have made away with some of them . . . At last we reached our home . . . Frank had borrowed a tent, and as we entered it I sunk to the ground in exhaustion and immediately fell into a heavy sleep. Tired as Frank was he made a fire, boiled the tea kettle and steeped a strong cup of tea. He awakened me and after drinking a cup of tea, I again sunk into a heavy sleep, and there I lay until morning, with hat, dress, gloves &c all on.

  To her dismay, Julia Gage Carpenter found that the nearest town, Edgeley, was a flimsy wooden affair, apparently only six weeks old. She came to hate the plains and the privations of pioneer life. By January 1884, during weather that reached 48 degrees below zero at noon, Carpenter was writing in her diary “I am frantically lonely. Can hardly endure it.” Her diary continued in the same grim vein for years.

  Unlike men, who occasionally went to town, women were confined to the sod house.
Distance and the scarcity of population made companionship rare. When Ohio-born Sedda Hemry moved to Wyoming to marry a sheepherder she did not see another White woman for six months. Madness on the windswept plains was much higher amongst women than amongst men. “Pray for me,” wrote Sarah Sim from Nebraska to her parents, “that I may overcome my present fear.” Sim was severely melancholic, and for eight months bit herself and her children, smashed everything in sight and acted demented. When she tried to commit suicide her husband was obliged to tie her to the bed. She recovered.

  Not all women were helpmates to men. Around 15 per cent of homesteaders in some states were lone women; and in some areas, women proved up on claims – that is, fulfilled the conditions for ownership under the Homestead Act – more often than men.

  The shortage of women on the plains gave them a peculiar power. If a man wanted a wife, he often had to agree to her demands not to drink or to smoke. As the female population of the plains grew, so did the temperance movement. Carry Nation from Kansas went on hatchet-wielding forays which left a trail of smashed-up saloons behind her.

  Temperance was not the only movement Western women were involved with. In Wyoming Territory in December 1869, for the first time on the continent, women were “invested with all the political rights, duties, franchises, and responsibilities of male citizens.” Women thus had the vote in Wyoming 50 years before female suffrage was added to the US Constitution, this largely due to campaigning by the “Wyoming Tea Party” led by Esther McQuigg Morris, plus some astute politics by male legislators, who hoped to attract responsible woman settlers to the state, so offsetting the influence of the lawless (male) elements who had arrived to work on the railroads.