The Conquest: The Story of a Negro PioneerMicheaux, Oscar
General
The Conquest: The Story of a Negro Pioneer
Micheaux, Oscar
African American pioneers -- Fiction; Autobiographical fiction; South Dakota -- Fiction; Western stories
In coming from Calias, the trail led over a monstrous hill, and from the
top "Amro," the name having been shortened, nestling in the valley
below, reminding me of Mexico City as it appeared from the highlands
near Cuernavaca. A party from Hedrick, by the name of Van Neter, built a
hotel fifty by one hundred feet, with forty rooms, and during the
opening and filing made a small fortune. The house was always full and
high prices were charged, and thus Amro prospered.
During the month of April the promoters succeeded in having the governor
call an election to organize the county, the election to be held in June
following. The filing had been made in April and May, and as conditions
were, no one could vote except cowboys, Indians and mixed-bloods. In the
election Amro won the county seat, and settlers moving into the county
were exceedingly mortified over the fact, having to be governed eighteen
months by an outlaw set who had deprived them of a voice in the
organization of the county. As Amro had won, it soon became the central
city and grew, as Calias had grown, and in a short time had a half-dozen
general stores, two garages, four hotels, four banks, and every other
line of business that goes to make up a western town. Its four livery
barns did all the business their capacity would permit, while the
saloons and gamblers feasted on the easy eastern cash that fell into
their pockets. In July the lot sales of the government towns were held,
but only one amounted to much, that town being farthest west and miles
from the eastern line of the county. This was Ritten, and under a ruling
of the Interior Department, a deposit of twenty-five dollars was
accepted on an option of sixty days, after which a payment of one-half
the price of the lot was required. Here it must be said that almost
every dollar invested on the Little Crow had been doubled in a short
time, and in many instances a hundred dollars soon grew to a thousand or
more.
Practically all the lowest number holders had filed around Ritten,
including numbers one and two. Ever since the opening of Oklahoma in
1901, when number one took a claim adjoining the city of Lawton, and the
owner is said to have received thirty thousand dollars for it, the
holder of number one in every opening of western land since has been a
very conspicuous figure, and this was not lost on the holder of number
one in Tipp county--who was a divorced woman. She took her claim
adjoining the town of Ritten, which fact brought the town considerable
attention. The lots in the town brought the highest price of any which
had been sold in any town on the Little Crow, up to that time, several
having sold for from one thousand, two hundred to one thousand, four
hundred dollars and one as high as two thousand and fifty dollars.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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