The Conquest: The Story of a Negro Pioneer

by Oscar Micheaux

  CHAPTER XXXI

  THE McCRALINES

  As before mentioned, I was given largely to observation and to readingand was fairly well posted on current events. I was always a lover ofsuccess and nothing interested me more after a day's work in the fieldthan spending my evening hours in reading. What I liked best was somegood story with a moral. I enjoyed reading stories by Maude RadfordWarren, largely because her stories were so very practical and true tolife. Having traveled and seen much of the country, while running as aporter for the P----n Company, I could follow much of her writings,having been over the ground covered by the scenes of many of herstories. Another feature of her writings which pleased me was the factthat many of the characters, unlike the central figures in many stories,who all become fabulously wealthy, were often only fairly successful andgained only a measure of wealth and happiness, that did not reachprohibitive proportions.

  Perhaps I should not have become so set against stories whose heroesinvariably became multi-millionaires, had it not been for the fact thatmany of the younger members of my race, with whom I had madeacquaintance in my trips to Chicago and other parts of the country,always appeared to intimate in their conversation, that a person shouldhave riches thrust upon them if they sacrificed all their "good times,"as they termed it, to go out west. Of course the easterner, in moststories, conquers and becomes rich, that is, after so much sacrifice.The truth is, in real life only about one in ten of the eastern peoplemake good at ranching or homesteading, and that one is usually wellsupplied with capital in the beginning, though of course there areexceptions. Colored people are much unlike the people of other races.For instance, all around me in my home in Dakota were foreigners ofpractically all nations, except Italians and Jews, among them beingSwedes, Norwegians, Danes, Assyrians from Jerusalem, many Austrians,some Hungarians, and lots of Germans and Irish, these last being mostlyAmerican born, and also many Russians. The greater part of these peopleare good farmers and were growing prosperous on the Little Crow, andseeing this, I worked the harder to keep abreast of them, if not alittle ahead. This was my fifth year and still there had not been acolored person on my land. Many more settlers had some and Tipp countywas filling up, but still no colored people. My white neighbors had manyvisitors from their old homes and but few but had visitors at some timeto see them and see what they were doing.

  During my visit to Kansas the spring previous, I had found manyprosperous colored families, most of whom had settled in Kansas in theseventies and eighties and were mostly ex-slaves, but were not like thepeople of southern Illinois, contented and happy to eke a living fromthe farm they pretended to cultivate, but made their farms pay bycareful methods. The farms they owned had from a hundred and sixtyacres to six hundred and forty acres, and one colored man there at thattime owned eleven hundred acres with twelve thousand dollars in thebank.

  Wherever I had been, however, I had always found a certain class inlarge and small towns alike whose object in life was obviously nothing,but who dressed up and aped the white people.

  After Miss Rooks had married I was again in the condition of theprevious year, but during the summer I had written to a young lady whohad been teaching in M--boro and whom I had met while visiting MissRooks. Her name was Orlean McCraline, and her father was a minister andhad been the pastor of our church in M--pls when I was a baby, but forthe past seventeen years had been acting as presiding elder over thesouthern Illinois district. Miss McCraline had answered my letters andduring the summer we had been very agreeable correspondents, and when inSeptember I contracted for three relinquishments of homestead filings, Idecided to ask her to marry me but to come and file on a Tipp countyclaim first.

  To get the money for the purchase of the relinquishments, I hadmortgaged my three hundred and twenty acres for seven thousand, sixhundred dollars, the relinquishments costing in the neighborhood of sixthousand, four hundred dollars. October was the time when the land wouldbe open to homestead filing, and Miss McCraline had written that shewould like to homestead. After sending my sister and grandmother themoney to come to Dakota, I went to Chicago, where I arrived oneSaturday morning. I had, since being in the west, stopped at the home ofa maiden lady about thirty-five years of age, and in talking with her Ihad occasion to speak of the family. Evidently she did not know I hadcome to see Orlean, or that I was even acquainted with the family. Ispoke of the Rev. McCraline and asked her if she knew him.

  "Who, old N.J. McCraline?" she asked. "Humph," she went on with acontemptuous snort. "Yes, I know him and know him to be the biggest oldrascal in the Methodist church. He's lower than a dog," she continued,"and if it wasn't for his family they would have thrown him out of theconference long ago, but he has a good family and for that reason theylet him stay on, but he has no principle and is mean to his wife, nevergoes out with her nor does anything for her, but courts every woman onhis circuit who will notice him and has been doing it for years. When heis in Chicago he spends his time visiting a woman on the west side. Hername is Mrs. Ewis."

  This recalled to my mind that during the spring I had come to Chicago Ihad become acquainted with Mrs. Ewis' son and had been entertained attheir home on Vernon Avenue where at that time the two families,McCraline and Ewis, rented a flat together, and although I had seen thegirls I had not become acquainted with any of the McCraline family then.Orlean was the older of the two girls. What Miss Ankin had said abouther father did not sound very good for a minister, still I had known insouthern Illinois that the colored ministers didn't always bear the bestreputations, and some of the colored papers I received in Dakota werecontinually making war on the immoral ministers, but since I had come tosee the girl it didn't discourage me when I learned her father had a badname although I would have preferred an opposite condition.

  I went to the phone a few minutes after the conversation with Miss Ankinand called up Miss McCraline, and when she learned I was in the city sheexpressed her delight with many exclamations, saying she did not know Iwould arrive in the city until the next day and inquired as to when Iwould call.

  "As nothing is so important as seeing you," I answered, "I will call attwo o'clock, if that is agreeable to you."

  She assured me that it was and at the appointed hour I called at theMcCraline home and was pleasantly received. Miss McCraline called in hermother, whom I thought a very pleasant lady. We passed a very agreeableevening together, going over on State street to supper and then out toJackson Park. I found Miss McCraline a kind, simple, and sympatheticperson; in fact, agreeable in every way.

  I had grown to feel that if I ever married I would simply have topropose to some girl and if accepted, marry her and have it over with. Iwas tired of living alone on the claim and wanted a wife and love, evenif she was a city girl. I felt that I hadn't the time to visit all overthe country to find a farmer's daughter. I had lived in the city andthought if I married a city girl I would understand her, anyway. Icould not claim to be in love with this girl, nor with anyone else, buthad always had a feeling that if a man and woman met and found eachother pleasant and entertaining, there was no need of a long courtship,and when we came in from a walk I stated the object of my trip.

  Miss McCraline was acquainted with a part of the story for, as stated,she had been teaching in M--boro at the time I went there to see MissRooks, and had seen her take up with the cook and marry foolishly. Shehad stated in her letters that she had been glad that I wrote to her andthat she thought Miss Rooks had acted foolishly, and when I explained mycircumstances and stated the proposition she seemed favorable to it. Itold her to think it over and I would return the next day and explain itto her mother.

  When I called the next morning and talked with her and her mother, theyboth thought it all right that Orlean should go to Dakota and file onthe homestead, then we would marry and live together on the claim, buther mother added somewhat nervously and apparently ill at ease, that Ihad better talk with her husband. As the Reverend was then some threehundred and seventy-five miles south of Chicago attendin
g conference, Icouldn't see how we could get together, but we put in the Sundayattending church and Sunday School, and that evening went to a downtowntheatre where we saw Lew Dokstader's minstrels with Neil O'Brien ascaptain of the fire department, which was very funny and I laughed untilmy head ached.

  The next day was spent in trying to communicate with the Reverend overthe long distance but we did not succeed. Fortunately, at about fiveo'clock Mrs. Ewis came over from the west side. I had known Mrs. Ewis tobe a smart woman with a deeper conviction than had Mrs. McCraline, whomshe did not like, but as Mrs. McCraline was in trouble and did not knowwhich way to turn, Mrs. Ewis was approached with the subject. Orlean wasan obedient girl and although she wanted to go with me, it was evidentthat I must get the consent of her parents. She was nearly twenty-sevenyears old and girls of that age usually wish to get married. Her youngersister had just been married, which added to her feeling of loneliness.The result of the consultation with Mrs. Ewis, as she afterwardexplained to me, was that it was decided that it would not be proper forOrlean to go alone with me but if I cared to pay her way she wouldaccompany us as chaperon. I was getting somewhat uneasy as I had paidtwelve hundred dollars into the bank at Megory for the relinquishment,which I would lose if someone didn't file on the claim by the second ofOctober. It was then about September twenty-fifth and I readilyconsented to incur the expense of her trip to Megory, where we soonlanded. While I had been absent my sister and grandmother had arrived.On October first, all three were ready to file on their claims, andDakota's colored population would be increased by three, and fourhundred and eighty acres of land would be added to the wealth of thecolored race in the state. Hundreds of others had purchasedrelinquishments and were waiting to file also. A ruling of thedepartment had made it impossible to file before October first, and whenit was seen that only a small number would be able to file on that day,the register and receiver inaugurated a plan whereby all desiring tofile on Tipp county claims should form a line in front of the landoffice door, and when the office opened, the line should file throughthe office in the order in which they stood, and numbers would be issuedto them which would permit them to return to the land office and maketheir filings in turn, thereby avoiding a rush and the necessity ofremaining in line until admitted to the land office.