During the morning there was an attempt made to induce the surveyors of the different land companies to combine and readjust their different plans, but without success. Finally, at three o clock, the people came together in desperation to decide what was to be done, and, after an amusing and exciting mass-meeting, fourteen unhappy and prominent citizens were selected to agree upon an entirely new site. The choosing of this luckless fourteen was accomplished by general nomination, each nominee having first to stand upon a box that he might be seen and considered by the crowd. They had to submit to such embarrassing queries as, “Where are you from, and why did you have to leave?” “Where did you get that hat?” “What is your excuse for living?” “Do you live with your folks, or does your wife support you?” “What was your other name before you came here?” The work of this committee began on the morrow, and as they slowly proceeded along the new boundary lines which they had mapped out, they were followed by all of those of the population, which now amounted to ten thousand souls, who thought it safe to leave their claims. As a rule, they found three men on each lot, and it was their pleasant duty to decide to which of these the lot belonged. They did this on the evidence of those who had lots near by. In many cases, each member of each family had selected a lot for himself, and this complicated matters still farther. The crowd at last became so importunate and noisy that the committee asked for a military guard, which was given them, and the crowd after that was at least kept off the lot they were considering. The committee met with no real opposition until it reached Main Street on Saturday, the fifth day of the city’s life, where those who had settled along the lines laid down by the Seminole Land Company pulled up the stakes of the citizens’ committee as soon as they were driven down. For a time it looked very much as though the record of peace was about to be broken along with other things, but a committee of five men from each side of the street decided the matter at a meeting held that afternoon. At this same public meeting articles of confederation were adopted, and a temporary Mayor, Recorder, Police Judge, and other city officials were appointed, who were to receive one dollar for their services. This meeting closed with cheers and with the singing of the doxology.
The next day was Sunday, and was more or less observed. Captain Stiles visited the gamblers, who swarmed about the place in great numbers, and asked them to close their tables, which they did, although he had no power to stop them if they had not wished to do so. In the afternoon two separate religious services were held, to which the people were called by a trumpeter from the infantry camp.
This is, in brief, the history of the first week of this new city. There were, considering the circumstances, but few disturbances, and there was no drunkenness. This is disappointing, but true. Both came later. But at the first no one cared to shoot the gentleman on the other end of his lot, lest the man on the next lot might prove to be a relative of his, and begin to shoot too. Later on, when everybody became better acquainted, the shooting was more general. They could not easily get anything to drink, as Captain Stiles seized all the liquor, and when it came in vessels of unmanageable size that could not be stored away, spilled it over the prairie. In two weeks over one thousand buildings were enclosed, and there would have been more if there had been more lumber.
It would be interesting to follow the course of this sky-rocket among cities up to the present day, and tell how laws were evolved and courts established, and the complexities of the situation disentangled; but that is work for one of the many bright young men who write monographs on economic subjects at the Johns Hopkins University. It is just the sort of work in which they delight, and which they do well, and they will find many “oldest inhabitants” of this three-year-old city to take equal delight in telling them of these early days, and in explaining the rights and wrongs of their individual lawsuits against their city and their neighbors.
POST-OFFICE, APRIL 22, 1889
It is impossible, in considering the founding of Oklahoma, to overrate the services of Captain Stiles. Seldom has the case of the right man in the right place been so happily demonstrated. He was particularly fitted to the work, although I doubt if the Government knew of it before he was sent there, so apt is it to get the square peg in the round hole, unless the square peg’s uncle is a Senator. But Captain Stiles, when he was a lieutenant, had ruled at Waco, Texas, during the reconstruction period, and the questions and difficulties that arose after the war in that raw community fitted him to deal with similar ones in the construction of Oklahoma. He was and is intensely unpopular with the worst element in Oklahoma, and the better element call him blessed, and have presented him with a three hundred dollar gold cane, which is much too fine for him to carry except in clear weather. This is the way public sentiment should be adjusted. Personal bravery had, I think, as much to do with his success as the readiness with which he met the difficulties he had to solve at a moment’s consideration. Several times he walked up to the muzzles of revolvers with which desperadoes covered him and wrenched them out of their owners’ hands. He never interfered between the people and the civil law, and resisted the temptation of misusing his authority in a situation where a weaker man would have lost his head and abused his power. He was constantly appealed to to settle disputes, and his invariable answer was, “I am not here to decide which of you owns that lot, but to keep peace between you until it is decided.” In September of 1889 a number of disaffected citizens announced an election which was to overthrow those then in power, and Captain Stiles was instructed by his superior officers to prevent its taking place. This he did with a small force of men in the face of threats from the most dangerous element in the community of dynamite bombs and of a body of men armed with Winchesters who were to shoot him first and his men later. But in spite of this he visited and broke all the voting booths, wrested a Winchester from the hands of the man who pointed it at his heart through one of the windows of the polling-place, and finally charged the mob of five hundred men with twenty-five soldiers and his fighting surgeon, young Dr. Ives, and dispersed them utterly. I heard these stories of him on every side, and I was rejoiced to think how well off our army must be in majors, that the people at Washington can allow one who has served through the war and on the border and in this unsettled Territory, and whose hair has grown white in the service, to still wear two bars on his shoulder-strap.
It is much more pleasant to write of these early days of Oklahoma City than of the Oklahoma City of the present, although one of its citizens would not find it so, for he regards his adopted home with a fierce local pride and jealousy almost equal to a Chicagoan’s love for Chicago, which is saying a very great deal. But to the transient visitor Oklahoma City of to-day, after he has recovered from the shock its extent and solidity give him, is dispiriting and unprofitable to a degree. This may partly be accounted for by the circumstance that his only means of entering it from the south by train is, or was at the time I visited it, at four o’clock in the morning. No one, after having been dragged out of his berth and dropped into a cold misty well of darkness, punctured only by the light from the brakeman’s lantern and a smoking omnibus lamp, is in a mood to grow enthusiastic over the city about him. And the fact that the hotel is crowded, and that he must sleep with the barkeeper, does not tend to raise his spirits. I can heartily recommend this method of discouraging immigration to the authorities of any already overcrowded city.
POST-OFFICE, JULY 4, 1890