THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN.
385
nor ritual. He was originally a sun-worshiper; but now he mingles with his religious ceremonies many of the rites of the Christian. He worships the Great Spirit, and believes almost universally in a future life. The Indian who becomes converted to Christianity is usually characterized by his moral, upright life.
Since 1889 twenty-three million acres have been taken from the Indian reservations and added to the public domain. When Oklahoma was first thrown open to settlement the great cry, “ Land für der landloss und Heimath für det Heimathloss,” went out through all our broad land. The old chief, Queenoshamno, when he knew that the lands where his warrior father had lived and died, where his sons and daughters had grown to manhood and womanhood, were to be given to the white man, said: “ Old Queenoshamno will never see the white man in his home,” and his sightless eyes, made so by his own hands, are a proof of his heroism, born of his patriotism and desperation.
The sun rose on the 22d day of April, 1889, in a clear sky. A sunrise in Oklahoma is a beautiful sight. The east gives a rosy promise of themorning, justthe first soft glimmer from the gates ajar of that Heavenly chamber whence the sun will by-and- by come rejoicing. A doubtful, slowly-growing light spreads, encroaching on the shadows in the east. The sky beds itself on the bright green of the prairie with a deep foundation of rosy red, and builds upward with gradations of softest pink and gold and colors no one can name. Infinite changes gently succeed. The stars fade slowly, blinking at the increasing light like old religions dying before the Gospel. Graceful, airy clouds hover around. Shortly they put on glorious robes, and their faces are bright, as if, like Moses, in some lofty place they had seen God face to face. You wait but a moment for the grand uprise of the sun. Then narrow flashes of brilliant, dazzling light shoot up into the dusky immensity above it. Another moment and the west sees it. Another, the whole heavens feel it, and the day is full blown. The mist settles into the valleys, and you look into the face of the sun through a clear atmosphere. The air is laden with the fragrance of a thousand awakening flowers.
The day had now fairly opened on this seemingly interminable waste of prairie. The landscape was wrapped in a mantle of stillness, undisturbed save by the morning anthem of the mocking-bird and meadow lark. For the meadow lark of Oklahoma, unlike his northern brother, is a singing bird. The prairies were covered with green, for spring comes early in this warm climate. Thousands of flowers raised their little heads fearlessly. For a hundred years they had grown, budded, blossomed and died, kissed by the sun, wet by the dew, and swayed by the balmy breezes of the south. The purple mallows, the rose-tinted gentian of the South, the white poppy of the West, and the spring beauty of the North, are all here, for Oklahoma combines the flora of these three sections to make her own.
The prairie dog sat contentedly at the door of his village, and the rabbit confidently took his usual morning stroll. The quail and plover cared for their little ones in happy ignorance that, before the sun set, their homes would be crushed under the tread of men and horses, and their little broods scattered and dead.
The hours go by. The sun climbs to the zenith. Twelve hundred mounted soldiers guard the line of the territory. It is high noon. The signal for the start is given, and with one mighty shout the whole line breaks intp a wild race for the new lands. Such a sight was never seen in the history of this country. There are thousands of people in all kinds of conveyances, thousands mounted on all sorts of steeds, from the little burro of Mexico and the wiry Texas pony to the powerful thoroughbred of Kentucky. When the sun went down that night sixty thousand white men slept in the land of the uglo homma.
The desire for a home, a piece of God’s green earth that he can call his own, is the absorbing passion in the breast of many a man and woman. The sacrifices made by many to obtain homes for themselves and^children in this new, strange land required the greatest degree of heroism. But the farmer of Oklahoma today, as he looks
( 25 )