ills of the
Northwest. In 1896 Montana contained 3,000,000 sheep, and Wyoming and
Idaho each over 1,000,000. In the two Dakotas 60,000,000 bushels of
wheat and 30,000,000 of corn were harvested. Many of the farms are of
enormous size. Ten, twenty, thirty thousand acre farms are not unknown.
One contains 75,000 acres.

[Illustration: A typical prairie sod house]

Over this region, the Dakotas, Montana, Kansas, and Nebraska, wander
herds of cattle, the slaughtering and packing of which have founded new
branches of industry. The stockyards at Chicago make a city.[1]

[Footnote 1: Read "Dakota Wheat-Fields," _Harper's Magazine,_ March,
1880. Also a series of papers in _Harper's Magazine _for 1888.]

%527. Oklahoma.%--The eagerness of the "cattle kings" to get more
land for these herds to graze over had much to do with the opening of
Oklahoma for settlement. Originally it was part of Indian Territory, and
was sold by the Seminole Indians with the express condition that none
but Indians and freedmen should settle there. But the cattle kings, in
defiance of the government, went in and inclosed immense tracts. Many
were driven out, only to come in again. Their expulsion, with that of
small proprietors called "boomers," caused much agitation. Congress
bought a release from the condition, and in 1889 opened Oklahoma to
settlement.

%528. The Boom Towns.%--A proclamation that a part of Oklahoma would
be opened April 22, caused a wild rush from every part of the West, till
five times as many settlers as could possibly obtain land were lined up
on the borders waiting for the signal to cross. Precisely at noon on
April 22, a bugle sounded, a wild yell answered, a cloud of dust filled
the air, and an army of men on foot, on horseback, in wagons, rushed
into the promised land. That morning Guthrie was a piece of prairie
land. That night it was a city of 10,000 souls. Before the end of the
year 60,000 people were in Oklahoma, building towns and cities of no
mean character.

Within fifteen years Oklahoma had a population of over half a million;
and Congress provided (1906) for the admission, in 1907, of a new
forty-sixth state, including both Oklahoma and what was left of the old
Indian Territory.

SUMMARY

1. One important result of the Civil War was a great industrial
revolution.

2. Mining for precious metals, the Northern Pacific Railroad, and other
causes led to the admission into the Union of Colorado (1876), North an