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Show Wyoming Looks Back Upon Ifs Fifty Years As a State; It Has the Distinction of Being First to Give the Women a Vote By ELMO SCOTT WATSON (Released by Western Newspaper Union.) ON JULY 10 a new United States commemorative postage stamp is being placed on sale for the first time. Now, there's nothing especially remarkable about this, for the Post Office department de-partment has sent forth a veritable flood of "commem-oratives" "commem-oratives" during the last eight years. But the fact that this stamp is being issued in connection with the 50th anniversary anni-versary of the admission of Wyoming to the sisterhood of states gives it more than merely local or regional interest. To Americans the name "Wyoming" means a variety of things. To a majority of us it symbolizes, perhaps more than the name of any other state, the "Wild West," and rightly so. For it is doubtful if any other state west of the Mississippi has been the scene of more acts in the drama of the "Winning of the West" than have been staged within Wyoming's 97,914 square miles. Although the route of Lewis and Clark's epic journey took them north of Wyoming, the names of two members of their party are written on the pages of her history. In 1809 John Colter, who left Lewis and Clark during their return journey to St. Louis, became the first white man to gaze upon the marvels of that wonderland which was first called "John Colter's Hell" and which we now know as Yellowstone National Na-tional park. Three quarters of a century later an old Indian woman wom-an died on the Wind River reservation reser-vation of her people, the Sho-shones, Sho-shones, and today a simple monument mon-ument marks what Wyoming believes be-lieves (despite counter claims by North and South Dakota) to be the last resting place of Saca-jawea, Saca-jawea, or the "Bird Woman," the heroic Indian girl who guided Lewis and Clark across the Shining Shin-ing mountains. Long before Lewis and Clark, Wyoming had been visited by explorers ex-plorers of another nation the Frenchman, Sieur de la Veren-drye, Veren-drye, and his sons who were searching for good sites to establish estab-lish posts for trading with the Indians. That was in 1743 and soon afterwards France lost to England in the struggle to dominate dom-inate North America. So it fell to the lot of a new breed of men to exploit Wyoming's riches in furs the American trapper and fur trader. The late 1820s and the 1830s saw the full flowering of the fur trade and wrote on Wyoming's pages the names of such men as Gen. William H. Ashley, Jedediah Smith, Jim Beckwourth, Manuel Lisa, Jim Bridger, Thomas Fitz-patrick, Fitz-patrick, the Sublettes, Baptiste Brown, Kit Carson and a host of other giants in buckskin. Then, almost before the day of the trapper and trader had dawned, the sun went down on this dramatic dra-matic chapter in American history. his-tory. The Oregon Trail. For the wagon trains of Oregon-bound homeseekers or California Cali-fornia gold hunters began streaming stream-ing westward and one of America's Amer-ica's most historic highways, the Oregon Trail, wound across Wyoming Wy-oming from its eastern border to its western. Across it also wound the Salt Lake Trail, over which hurried the Mormons on their way to the Promised Land in Utah, and the Overland Trail, which echoed to the rumblings of the Concord stagecoaches and the hurrying hoofs of the Pony Express. The building of such sentinel posts as historic Fort Laramie and Fort Bridger to guard the traffic over these trails held in check for a little while the hostile hos-tile red men. But when the Union Pacific began to push westward west-ward and forts were built along the Bozeman Trail to guard the gold-seekers, gold-seekers, hurrying to the new diggings dig-gings in Montana, the Sioux and Cheyennes girded their naked red loins for a last stand against the invaders. The result was "Red Cloud's War." Although the Treaty of 1868, signed at Fort Laramie, was a victory for Red Cloud, in that the government agreed to abandon the posts along the Bozeman Trail, it was far from being complete. For the Union Pacific continued to push westward and when, in May, 1869, the "Golden Spike" was driven at Promontory Point in Utah, the hammers which drove it home sounded the death knell of Indian domination in Wyoming. True, the Sioux and Cheyennes would fight another war in 1876-77, but the final result y,.,.,...,...,..w.,.,. .. ......,. , . . .,...,.,., -,..,,,.,..,i.,.,VW,-.,.,.....r.-., . The Old Occidental hotel in Buffalo, Wyo., said to have been the scene of the encounter between "The Virginian" and his enemy, "Trampas," in Owen Wister's novel. was a foregone conclusion the conquest of the red man and the seizure of his lands by the whites. The Day of the Cattleman. After the Indian wars were over came one of the most glamorous glam-orous periods in Wyoming's history his-tory the day of the cattleman. Brief though it was, it lasted long enough to make the name of Wyoming Wy-oming synonymous with the word "cowboy," that picturesque American figure whose jingling spurs still echo in the American consciousness even though the era of the "open range" is long since past. For the day of the cattleman came to a climax and an end in 1892 with the famous "Johnson County War," or the "Rustler War," a fight between the cattle barons and the small ranchmen. It not only ended the reign of the barons but it also foreshadowed the coming of sheepmen, who began be-gan to crowd upon and spoil the cattle ranges, the "nester" or small farmer, and finally the "dude rancher" of today. Such, in brief outline, is the thrilling history of the state of Wyoming. But there is another fact in her history which makes her unique among the sisterhood of states. It is suggested by the mmf4 ,.....:lmt n..Iy4mifeg--. : " 4 central figure of a woman in the new stamp with the legend "Equal Rights" above her head. When congress, in 1868, created the Territory of Wyoming from parts of Dakota, Utah and Idaho, one of the first acts of the territorial terri-torial legislature was to pass a bill granting women the right to vote. Two years later the new territory terri-tory did an even more unheard-of unheard-of thing. In March, 1870, when the grand jury for the regular term of the court of the First Judicial district at Laramie was drawn, there appeared on the panel the names of the first women wom-en to be summoned to act as common com-mon law jurors anywhere in the world. Miss Eliza Stewart, a school teacher, had the distinction distinc-tion of heading the list of eight women whose names were drawn and who served on the jury. They were Nelly Hagen, Mary Wilcox, Retta Burnham, Mary Flynn, Mrs. I. M. Hartsough, Lizzie Liz-zie A. Spooner, and Jenny Ivin-son. Ivin-son. Appointed as a bailiff was another woman, Martha Boies. News of this startling innovation innova-tion in the conduct of public affairs af-fairs spread all over the world and King William of Prussia, who seems to have been something of a feminist, cabled President U. S. Grant his enthusiastic congratulations. congrat-ulations. Reporters and cartoonists cartoon-ists swarmed to Laramie and pictured pic-tured the women jurors as masculine mas-culine creatures with bawling babies ba-bies in their arms. Some unknown un-known poet celebrated the event in a deathless couplet: "Baby, baby, don't get in a fury; Your mama's gone to sit on the jury." But for all the ridicule, the women jurors proved to be a success. suc-cess. They not only served on a jury, but they indicted a murderer murder-er and convicted him! If the majority of Americans think of Wyoming in terms of cowboys, cow-boys, bucking broncos, ridin' and ropin' and roundups, credit for that fact is due more to one man, perhaps, than to any other single factor. And, paradoxically, he . wasn't a Westerner at all. He was an Easterner, a "tenderfoot." A Tenderfoot Goes West. Owen Wister was his name and he was born in Philadelphia just 80 years ago on July 14, 1860. A friend of Theodore Roosevelt while a student at Harvard, he planned a career in music and was well on the way to success in it abroad when the insistence of his father resulted in his returning re-turning to Harvard to study law. His health broke before he was well started and, as Roosevelt had done, he went West to recuperate. recu-perate. That was in the middle eighties, and he lived in Arizona and Wyoming and learned to love the West. He returned to it each spring and in 1891, upon his return re-turn from a summer in Wyoming, Wyo-ming, wrote two stories about the country and its people, "Hank's Woman" and "How Lin McLean Went West," both of which appeared ap-peared in Harper's Magazine. He continued writing Western stories and in 1896 the first group of his tales were gathered in a volume called "Red Men and White." A second volume, "Lin McLean," came out two years later. Thus far Wister's work had been accepted by critics as authentic portrayals of life in the West but it had not enjoyed any particular popular success. Then in 1902 his novel "The Virginian" appeared. The book became a best seller in a day when historical novels were especially popular and it continues to sell even today. At the time of Wister's death in 1938 it was announced that the total sales of "The Virginian" had passed the 1,500,000 mark, a distinction dis-tinction which few American novels nov-els have ever attained. Soon after "The Virginian" was published it was dramatized and, with Dustin Farnum playing the role of the hero, Frank Campeau as Trampas and Guy Bates Post as Steve, it was a "best seller" for six months. Afterwards it ran "on the road" for 10 years, is still played by stock companies, has been made into a movie no less than three times and has been translated into foreign languages. lan-guages. Since Wyoming was the scene of the story of "The Virginian" and its cowpuncher-hero was a glamorous, romantic figure, it is easy to understand why America thinks of that commonwealth which is celebrating its fiftieth year as a state this year, in terms of the cowboy. Another reason is indicated in the preface to one of Wister's later books "Members of the Family," published pub-lished in 1911. In it he says: Wyoming burst upon the tenderfoot resplendent, like all the story-books, like Cooper and Irving and Parkman come true again; here, actually going on. was that something which the boy runs away from school to find, that land safe and far from Monday morning, nine o'clock, and the spelling-book; here was Saturday eternal, where you slept out-of-doors, hunted big animals, rode a horse, roped steers, and wore deadly weapons. Make no mistake: fire-arms were at times practical and imperative, but this was not the w-hole reason for sporting them on your hip; you had escaped es-caped from civilization's schoolroom, an air never Dreathed before filled your lungs, and you were become one large shout of joy. College-boy. farm-boy. street-boy, this West melted you all down to the same first principles. Were you seeking fortune. Perhaps, incidentally, but money was not the point; you had escaped from school. This holiday was leavened by hard bodily work, manly deeds and the bright brave ripple moved the ground-swell of tragedy. Something of a promise, also, was in the air. promise of a democracy which the East had missed. The truth of that quotation with certain reservations as to "wearing deadly 'weapons," perhaps per-haps is immediately apparent to anyone who has ever spent a vacation on a modern Wyoming dude ranch. And for the thousands thou-sands of Americans who have driven across Wyoming the truth of this quotation from the preface pref-ace of "The Virginian" is also apparent: The mountains are there, far and shining, shin-ing, and the sunlight, and' the infinite earth, and the air that seems forever the true fountain of youth but where is the buffalo, and the wild antelope, and where the horsTnan with his pasturing thousands? So ;.ike its old self does the sage-brush seem when revisited, that you wait for the horseman to appear. But he will never come again. He rides in his historic yesterday. You will no more see him gallop out of the unchanging un-changing silence than you will see Columbus Co-lumbus on the unchanging sea come sailing sail-ing from Palos with his caravels. |