Democratic Sentinel, Volume 17, Number 37, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 29 September 1893 — Dirty, Tired and Sore. [ARTICLE]

Dirty, Tired and Sore.

The story of the rush into the Cherokee Strip of men and women seeking homes or town lots already has boon told. That great strip of territory which Saturday morning was comparatively a wilderness by night of the same day was covered with a hundred thousand people locating farms or staking out |,tjpwn lots. It was a stirring spectacle, but it had also its pathetic features. Thousands who made the rush are now returning to their homes partly because they could not get farms or town lots and partly beeauso when they got their land they were disappointed in it. This was but natural. There was not land enough

to,go round, certainly far from enough good land. Still others aro stranded. They neither have the land they hoped to get nor the money with which to get back, so chat they are in danger of becoming a burden upon the now communities, where farmers can get nothing from the land for a year to come, and where there will be no work in the towns. Those who succeed in returning will fare better than many of those who remain and \vho will find it difficult to get food and wator. Southern hot winds are drying up all vegetation. Prairie firos aro consuming the grass. Sand storms are raging. Nearly every claim in the strip is contested and sanguinary personal encounters are liable to ensue. Thieves and thugs are infesting the now towns. The land is anything but a Canaan. To add to the miseries and disappointments of the rushers it is stated that those who started at the lines with their papers found when they reached tho county seats that “sooners” in collusion with the soldiers had arrived before them and grabbed everything worth having. They had picked out the host lots and farms, and wero already on tho ground when the pooulo came up. This is certainly outrageous. It is a fraud which ought not to be tolerated.