A general view of the town on April 24, 1889,
the second day after the opening.
A view along Oklahoma Avenue on May 10, 1889.
Oklahoma Avenue as it appeared on May 10, 1893,
during Governor Noble’s visit.
THE BUILDING OF A WESTERN TOWN, GUTHRIE, OKLAHOMA.
In addition to the prospect of thus losing all their lands, the Indians were, in the winter of 1890, famine-stricken through failure of Government rations. With little hope of justice or revenge in their own strength, the aggrieved savages sought supernatural solace. The so-called “Messiah Craze” seized upon Sioux, Cheyennes, Arapahoes, Osages, Missouris, and Seminoles. Ordinarily at feud with one another, these tribes all now united in ghost dances, looking for the Great Spirit or his Representative to appear with a high hand and an outstretched arm to bury the white and their works deep underground, when the prairie should once more thunder with the gallop of buffalo and wild horses. Southern negroes caught the infection. Even the scattered Aztecs of Mexico gathered around the ruins of their ancient temple at Cholula and waited a Messiah who should pour floods of lava from Popocatapetl, inundating all mortals not of Aztec race.
While frontiersmen trembled lest massacres should follow these Indian orgies, people in the East were shuddering over the particulars of a real catastrophe indescribably awful in nature. On a level some two hundred and seventy-five feet lower than a certain massive reservoir, lay the city of Johnstown, Pa. The last of May, 1889, heavy rains having fallen, the reservoir dam burst, letting a veritable mountain of water rush down upon the town, destroying houses, factories, bridges, and thousands of lives. Relief work, begun at once and liberally supplied with money from nearly every city in the Union and from many foreign contributors, repaired as far as might be the immediate consequences of the disaster.
Along with the Johnstown Flood will be remembered in the annals of Pennsylvania the Homestead strike, in 1892, against the Carnegie Steel Company, occasioned by a cut in wages. The Amalgamated Steel and Iron Workers sought to intercede against the reduction, but were refused recognition. Preparing to supplant the disaffected workmen with non-union men, a force of Pinkerton detectives was brought up the river in armored barges. Fierce fighting ensued. Bullets and cannon-balls rained upon the barges, and receptacles full of burning oil were floated down stream. The assailants wished to withdraw, repeatedly raising the white flag, but it was each time shot down. Eleven strikers were killed; of the attacking party from thirty to forty fell, seven dead. When at last the Pinkertons were forced to give up their arms and ammunition and retire, a bodyguard of strikers sought to shield them, but so violent was the rage which they had provoked that, spite of their escort, the mob brutally attacked them. Order was restored only when the militia appeared.
Main Street, Johnstown, after the flood.