The Cattle Kings
It is proper now to look back yet again over the scenes with
which we hitherto have had to do. It is after the railways have
come to the Plains. The Indians now are vanishing. The buffalo
have not yet gone, but are soon to pass.
Until the closing days of the Civil War the northern range was a
wide, open domain, the greatest ever offered for the use of a
people. None claimed it then in fee; none wanted it in fee. The
grasses and the sweet waters offered accessible and profitable
chemistry for all men who had cows to range. The land laws still
were vague and inexact in application, and each man could
construe them much as he liked. The excellent homestead law of
1862, one of the few really good land laws that have been put on
our national statute books, worked well enough so long as we had
good farming lands for homesteading--lands of which a quarter
section would support a home and a family. This same homestead
law was the only one available for use on the cattle-range. In
practice it was violated thousands of times--in fact, of
necessity violated by any cattle man who wished to acquire
sufficient range to run a considerable herd.
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