The Prairie Schooner

Copyright, 1918 By SAUL BROTHERS Chicago
To My Wife MAMIE TARBELL HOOKER A Pioneer of the Jim River (Dakota) Valley
Illustration and Patent Color Process by J. D. Johnsen
When the Union Pacific Railroad was completed from Omaha, Nebraska, to Ogden, Utah, it passed through a territory about as barren of business as one can imagine. It apparently was a great Sahara, and in fact some of the territory now growing bumper crops of alfalfa, grains and fruits, was set down in school text-books in the 70's as the Great American Desert.
Its inhabitants were, outside of the stations on the railroad, largely roaming bands of Indians, a few hundred soldiers at military posts, some buffalo and other hunters, trappers, a few freighters, and many outlawed white men.
The railroad had no short line feeders, and there was, in the period of which I write, no need for them sufficient to warrant their construction. There were military posts scattered along the North Platte, and other rivers to the north, and the government had begun, as part of its effort to reconcile the Red Man to the march of civilization started by the Iron Horse, to establish agencies for the distribution of food in payment to the tribes for lands upon which they claimed sovereignty. These oases in the then great desert had to be reached with thousands of tons of flour, bacon, sugar, etc., consequently large private concerns were formed and contracts taken for the hauling by ox-teams of the provisions sent to the soldiers as well as the Indians.
The ox was the most available and suitable power for this traffic for the reason that he required the transportation of no subsistence in the way of food, and was thoroughly acclimated. Usually he was a Texan—a long horn—or a Mexican short horn with short stocky legs, although the Texan was most generally used, and was fleet-footed and built almost on the plan of a shad.
Both breeds were accustomed to no food other than the grasses of the country, upon which they flourished. These included the succulent bunch grass.