cry for land there came another proclamation from the
President, Theodore Roosevelt. Another great tract of land, the great
Rosebud Indian Reservation, with a million acres of homesteads, was to
be thrown open. A lottery with 1500 square miles of territory as the
sweepstakes and 100,000 people playing its wheel of fortune. Trying to
describe its size and sweep and significance, I find myself, in the
vernacular of the range, plumb flabbergasted.

Of course, there were some among the homesteaders on the Lower Brule who
found the grass greener on the Rosebud, and wanted to throw up their
claims and move on to new ground; but the government informed them,
somewhat grimly, that they could prove up where they were, or not at
all. And I can understand their restlessness. To this day I never hear
of some new frontier being developed without pricking up my ears and
quivering like a circus horse when he hears a band play. There are some
desert products that can't be rooted out--sagebrush and cactus and the
hold of the open spaces.

The Rosebud Opening was one of the most famous lotteries of them all.
The Rosebud reservation lay in Tripp County, across White River from the
Brule. Its conversion into homesteads meant an immediate income for the
United States Treasury, but according to a recent law, all monies
received from the sale of the lands were to be deposited to the credit
of the Indians belonging to and having tribal rights on the reservation,
the funds thus acquired to be used by Congress for the education,
support and civilization of the Indians.

The name Rosebud was emblazoned across the nation, after the government
proclamation, in the newspapers, in railroad pamphlets, on public
buildings. As usual, the railroads played a major part in aiding
prospective settlers to reach the registration points, a half-dozen
little western villages.

The frontier town of Pierre had been unprepared for the avalanche of
people who had descended upon it during the Lower Brule opening. Service
and equipment had been inadequate. In the great Bonesteel Opening a few
years earlier, gambling and lawlessness had run riot. Therefore
Superintendent Witten formulated and revised the drawing system,
endeavoring to work out the most suitable plan for disposing of these
tracts so that there might be no suggestion of unfairness.

Railroads traversing the West had already begun to extend their lines
still farther into the little-populated sectio