its feet.  Finally he reached one of the creeks running into the river.  The jaded animal just managed to drag its rider up the steep bank of the creek, and it then fell dead.  Its rider had no time for regrets.  He had still four or five miles to cover, and he commenced to run as fast as his legs would carry him.  His over-estimate of his horse’s powers of endurance, and his under-estimate of the distance to be covered, lost him his coveted home; for when he arrived a large colony had got in ahead of him from the western border, and there were two or three claimants to every homestead.

In other cases there were neck and neck races for favored locations, and sometimes it would have puzzled an experienced referee to have determined which was really the winner of the race.  Compromises were occasionally agreed to, and although there was a good deal of bad temper and recrimination, there was very little violence, and the men whose patience had been sorely taxed, behaved themselves admirably, earning the respect of the soldiers who were on guard to preserve order.  The excitement and uproar was kept up long after night-fall.  In their feverish anxiety to retain possession of the homes for which they had waited and raced, hundreds of men stayed up all night to continue the work of hut building, knowing that nothing would help them so much in pressing their claims for a title as evidence of work on bona fide improvements.  They kept on day after day, and, late in the season as it was, many of the newcomers raised a good crop that year.

The opening of other sections of the old Indian Territory, now included in Oklahoma, took place two or three years later, when the scenes we have briefly described were repeated.  To-day, Oklahoma extends right up to the southern Kansas line, and the Cherokee Strip, on whose rich blue grass hundreds of thousands of cattle have been fattened, is now a settled country, with at least four families to every square mile, and with a number of thriving towns and even large cities.  At the present time the question of Statehood for the youngest of our Territories is being actively debated.  No one disputes the fact that the population and wealth is large enough to justify the step, and the only question at issue is whether the whole of the Indian Territory should be included in the new State, or whether the lands of the so-called civilized tribes should be excluded.

The lawlessness which has prevailed in some portions of the Indian Territory is held to be a strong argument in favor of opening up all the lands for settlement.  At present the Indians own immense tracts of land under very peculiar conditions.  A large number of white men, many of them respectable citizens, and many of them outlaws and refugees from justice, have married fair Cherokee, Choctaw and Creek girls, and these men, while not recognized by the heads of the tribes, are able to draw from the Government, in the names of their wives, the large sums of money from time to time distributed.  Advocates of Statehood favor the allotment to each Indian of his share of the land, and the purchase by the Government of the immense residue, which could then be opened for settlement.