CHAPTER FO UR 



f 

 THE GRASS LANDS 



I remember bac\ in the seventies, 



Full many summers past, 



There was grass and water plenty, 



But it was too good to last. 



I little dreamed what would happen 



Some twenty summers hence, 



When the nester came with his wife, his \ids, 



His dogs, and his barbed'wire fence. 



("The Last Longhorn," supposedly by Judge R. W. Hall, Amarillo, Texas) 1 



Big bluestem, buffalo grass, bluebunch wheatgrass, mesquite 

 grass, grama, winterfat: that's what good range is made of. 

 Sagebrush and yucca, cheatgrass and Russian'thistle, snake' 

 weed and poverty grass: that's what bad range is made of. 

 Just as trees make a forest, grass makes the range. So far 

 as nature is concerned, the quality of the grass is controlled by 

 the amount of water that reaches it. Where there is a com' 

 paratively high rainfall, say twentyone inches, there are the 

 tall grasses of the prairie plains. Here in summer the widely 

 scattered eighteen and a half million acres of prairie that are 

 left is a brilliant green sea of tall, waving grasses. Catlin writing 

 of the rich bottom lands of the Missouri River between 1832 

 and 1839 told of "being obliged to follow the winding paths 

 of the buffalo, for the grass was higher than the backs of our 

 horses." 2 



1 John A. and Alan Lomax, Cowboy Songs, The Macmillan Company, New 

 York, 1938, p. 325. 



2 The >forth American Indians, Vol. II, London, 1880, p. 21. 



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