d above all the
religion of humanity. Good night, dear boy. I'm a little tired to
night. With great love,

DAD.

ANADARKO--February 26th, 1892.

DEAR FAMILY:--

I could not write you before as I have been traveling from pillars to
posts, (a joke), in a stage, night and day. I went to Fort Reno from
Oklahoma City where they drove me crazy almost with town lots and lot
sites and homestead holdings. It was all raw and mean, and greedy for
money and a man is much better off in every way in a tenement on Second
Avenue than the "owner of his own home" in one of these mushroom
cities-- So I think. I went to Fort Reno by stage and it seemed to me
that I was really in the West for the first time-- The rest has been as
much like the oil towns around Pittsburgh as anything else. But here
there are rolling prairie lands with millions of prairie dogs and deep
canons and bluffs of red clay that stand out as clear as a razor
hollowed and carved away by the water long ago. And the grass is as
high as a stirrup and the trees very plentiful after the plains of
Texas. The men at Fort Reno were the best I have met, indeed I am just
a little tired of trying to talk of things of interest to the Second
Lieutenant's intellect. But I had to leave there because I had missed
the beef issue and had to see it and as it was due here I pushed on.
This post is very beautiful but the men are very young and civil
appointments mainly, which means that they have not been to West Point
but had fathers and have friends with influence and they are fresh.
But the scenery around the post is delightfully wild and big and there
is an Indian camp at the foot of the hill on which the fort is stuck.
Mother, instead of going to Europe, should come here and see her
Indians. Only if she did she would bring a dozen or more of the
children back with her. They are the brightest spot in my trip and I
spend the mornings and afternoons trying to get them to play with me.
They are very shy and pretty and beautifully barbaric and wear the most
gorgeous trappings. The women, the older ones, are the ugliest women I
ever saw. But the men are fine. I never saw such color as they give
to the landscape and one always thinks they have dressed up just to
please you. I have spent most of my time and money in buying things
from them but they are very dear because the Indians take long to make
them and do not like to part with them. I have had rough times lately