estate, with each tribal member receiving one allotment, while the
rest of the territory would be opened to settlers. The allotment
system, which had already been imposed on many tribes, was
designed to end the old communal way of life and turn American
Indians into private-property owners—a situation that would, not
incidentally, make it easier to procure their land.
The Osage had seen what had happened to the Cherokee Outlet,
a vast prairie that was part of the Cherokees’ territory and was
near the western border of the Osage reservation. After the U.S.
government purchased the land from the Cherokee, it had
announced that at noon on September 16, 1893, a settler would be
able to claim one of the forty-two thousand parcels of land—if he
or she got to the spot first! For days before the starting date, tens
of thousands of men, women, and children had come, from as far
away as California and New York, and gathered along the
boundary; the ragged, dirty, desperate mass of humanity stretched
across the horizon, like an army pitted against itself.
Finally, after several “sooners” who’d tried to sneak across the
line early had been shot, the starting gun sounded—A RACE FOR
LAND SUCH AS WAS NEVER BEFORE WITNESSED ON EARTH, as one
newspaper put it. A reporter wrote, “Men knocked each other
down as they rushed onward. Women shrieked and fell, fainting,
only to be trampled and perhaps killed.” The reporter continued,
“Men, women and horses were laying all over the prairie. Here and
there men were fighting to the death over claims which each
maintained he was first to reach. Knives and guns were drawn—it
was a terrible and exciting scene; no pen can do it justice....It was a
struggle where the game was empathically every man for himself
and devil take the hindmost.” By nightfall, the Cherokee Outlet
had been carved into pieces.