An alternate view
Here’s a story published in The Oklahoman April 22, 1909 about the creation of Oklahoma City in 1899. I had never heard this version.
O(scar) A. Mitscher was an eighty-niner, the second mayor of Oklahoma City, a mercantile business owner and early day civic citizen. Here is his version of the settling of Oklahoma City.
Few, or comparatively few, of the present day Oklahoma citizens know that Oklahoma City the magnificint new state metropolis, rests upon the the ruins of a despoiled town, upon the wrecked hopes and homes of artisans and artificers whose long unquestioned right to the ground, succumbed to the white man’s might, whose hearth fires were ruthlessly trampled and scattered to the four winds, whose title to the land in which their townwas built, crumbled and toppled like the title of the wild horse, the buffalo and the cow boy; yea verily, a town existed here ahead of theis present magnificent city; the inhabitants of which were well organized in civic and civil community, peacefull and law abiding. Their police officers stood sentinel vigilantly heeding the coming and going of coyotes, cow boys, crows, owls and bats, their friends and foes, quick to welcome the former and evade the latter. The town true, was not as large as present Oklahoma City, neither had it the sky-scrapers, but the mounds , spires, avenue, and streets were readily discernible , and easily found near the present site of the Oklahoma Mill and Elavator Co.
The quiet and peace of this town sustained a shock on April 22, 1889, from which it never recovered. the advent of thousands and thousands of home seekers sent these poor rodents scurrying, not unlike the antics of the present day occupants when God in his majesty sent a black cloud through the heavens. This devastation of homes, firesides, and demolition of families, rendered all homeless, and made many orphans.
One day one of these poor homeless creatures harassed and harried lost from his fellows, blindly timorous and paralyzed with fright came running into my store, 307 Grand Avenue, surrendering his freedom, no doubt , with similar feeling experienced by man when in the act of committing self-destruction. The mental agony may have not have been quite so poignant, but the heartbeats were fully as wild and tumultuous.
A prairie dog. - The Oklahoman Archives
The little fellows’ appearance indicated unusual intelligence and respectability. It is therefore my belief that he must have held a prominent place in the social and political life of Prairie Dog Town.
He might have been a teacher in morality and dogmas, his whining and short sharp sentences while no doubt couched in choice Prairie Dog rhetoric were entirely uninteligable to me, but assuming that he was but human or at least not more than human, I knew the text of his discourse was either one of three subjects: first an appeal for something to eat; or second an appeal for rest, or third: an appeal for freedom, and restoration to his kind. Food he refused, rest he did not seem to want, hence freedom, for which more blood has been spilled than all else combined, being the topic of his pathetic appeal, naturally found response in the heart of a free American citizen.
Carefully providing for his comfort and safety , and providing myself with a conveyance, I made a trip to the flat just beyond Dead Man’s Crossing (NW 10th, south of Lake Overholser), about 12 miles west of the city, where all old timers will remember was a mammoth Prairie Dog Town, and there restored my little fugitive to his kinfolks.
This story having already exceeded my alloted space I must decline to tell what the Praire Dog said as I released him.
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