Rensselaer Journal, Volume 11, Number 2, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 20 June 1901 — SOONERS MUST GET OUT [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

SOONERS MUST GET OUT

Secretary of the Interior Hitchcock has requested Secretary of War Root to send into the Kiowa, Comanche and Apache reservations, in the Indian Territory, a body of United States troops to clear these reservations, which are soon to be thrown open for settlement of squatters, or "sooners," as they are known on the frontier. More than 1,000 of these "sooners” have entered the Wichita mountains and taken up mineral claims. The district, which is to be divided into homesteads of 160 acres each, is in the Oklahoma country, and is regarded as the most desirable farming land in the southwest. The department is determined that there shall be no injustice done to the settlers of this new reservation, and it does not propose that the scenes enact-

ed when Oklahoma was thrown open to settlement shall be repeated. A plan has been devised whereby each claimant will have an equal chance with every other claimant, although only a small percentage of those filing claims will secure homesteads. Already the applications on file exceed "By many thousands the number of tracts'> of 160 acres each which are to be disposed of to claimants. The town of Duncan, Okla., has made a protest against the location of 20,000 acres of grazing land directly opposite and adjoining the military forest reserve, because it raises a wall against the town in communicating with the new reservation when settled, ft is claimed that the land is too valuable for pasturage and could be easily settled with a prosperous population.

which would do business at Duncan. On the other hand a protest has come from Texas because the location of the main pasture qf 400,000 acres on the Texas boundary interferes with free intercourse of Texas people with the new settlement and likewise rears h wall against the people of that state. v Secretary Root has directed that a Koop of cavalry from Fort Sill, I. T., beKpnt Into the reservation to clear them of the lawless element'that has entered. The soldiers will probably be kept there until the day the lands are thrown* open to settlement. In the meantime the Kiowa Indians have sent a representative to Washington asking that the opening day be postponed until Congress can examine the treaty under which the act was passed.