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
The Oristown citizens claimed it was at one time in the same uncertainty
as the towns to the west, and for some fifteen or twenty years it had
waited for the road. With the road stopping at Oristown, they argued, it
would be fully ten years before it left, and during this time it could
be seen, Oristown would grow into an important prairie city, as it
should. Everything must be hauled into Oristown, as well as out. So it
can be seen that Oristown would naturally boom. While nothing had been
raised to the west to ship out, as yet, still there was a growing
population on the reservation and thousands of carloads of freight and
express were being hauled into and from Oristown monthly, for the
settlers on the reservation; which filled the town with railroad men and
freighters. Crops had been good, and every thing was going along
smoothly for the citizens and property owners of Oristown. Not a cloud
on her sky of prosperity, and as the trite saying goes: "Everything was
lovely, and the goose hung high," during the first year of settlement on
the Little Crow.
And now lest we forget Calias. Calias was located one and one-half miles
east, and three miles south of Megory, and five miles straight west of
Kirk. If the C. & R.W. extending its line west, should strike all the
government townsites, as was claimed by people in these towns, who knew
nothing about it, and Calias, it would have run from Kirk to Megory in a
very unusual direction. Indeed, it would have been following the section
lines and it is common knowledge even to the most ignorant, that
railroads do not follow section lines unless the section lines are
directly in its path. If the railroad struck Kirk and Megory, it was a
cinch it would miss Calias. If it struck Calias, perched on the banks of
the Monca Creek, the route the Nicholsons, as promoters of the town,
claimed it would take; the road would miss all the towns but Calias.
This would have meant glory and a fortune for the promotors and lot
holders of the town. It would also have meant that my farm, or at least
a part of it, would in time be sold for town lots.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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