340 Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts, and Letters. 
miles south of the Kansas border in the Cherokee Strip. The 
raiding parties had been gradually growing in strength up to 
this t;ime > and this one was made up of about six hundred men, 
women and children. On July 1, 1834, President Arthur 
issued a proclamation which was substantially the same as 
those of his predecessor, but the settlement at Kook Falls con¬ 
tinued to prosper and developed into a well settled town with 
its stores and its newspaper. Finally, on August 6, 1884, Gol. 
Hatch appeared at Rloek Falls, after the little settlement had 
prospered quietly for several months, and, explaining his mis¬ 
sion to the leaders and the people, read the President’s proc¬ 
lamation and ordered them to withdraw. The next day-the 
removals began, the improvements at Rock Falls were burned, 
Payne and others arrested and taken to Fort Smith, and the 
rest of the colonists driven across the border into Kansas, but 
Cherokee lands were not entirely cleared of intruders until 
the middle of September. 1 
The reported presence and active assistance of a cowboy in 
the removals at Rock Falls 2 indicates one of the principal 
grievances of the “Oklahoma boomers.” They knew that not 
only Oklahoma proper, but the whole western part of Indian 
Territory was in reality in possession of the cattlemen, and 
they could not understand why their right to make use of this 
land was not as good as that of the stock-raising companies nor 
why they should be ejected by the military forces while the 
cowboys and their herds were protected. In 1884 it w'as called 
to the attention of the Secretary of the Interior that Oklahoma 
was covered with wire cattle fences, and in June their removal 
by the military was ordered. This was carried out in Septem¬ 
ber, but it did not 'mean a removal of the cattle themselves. 3 
Payne died suddenly in November 1884 under suspicious 
circumstances, and a report was circulated to the effect that he 
had been poisoned by the cattlemen. He was succeeded by 
Clapt. W. L. Couch, who had been one of his associates. Couch 
1 Sec. Int. Rept.. 1884, vol. 1, pp. 31-32; Chautauquan, June 1889, p. 
534. 
2 Ibid., pp. 534-35. 
3 Sen. Ex. Doc., 50, 48 Cong., 2 Sess., pp. 5-6. 
