One Good Horse by Tom Groneberg

Author:Tom Groneberg
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Published: 2006-07-15T00:00:00+00:00

April 23, 1904. The United States Congress passes a bill which declares that all reservation lands should be surveyed in anticipation of settlement by whites. Indians are allotted parcels ranging from eighty to one hundred sixty acres, depending on the desirability of the land. Though the reservation boundary line cuts Flathead Lake in two running east to west, all of the lake’s islands are given to the Tribe. After the new bill is signed, small villa lots of two to five acres are formed on the islands. These villa sites are available to Flathead tribal members as allotments, but only a handful are claimed. The remaining lots go to homesteaders. A number of families make the barge trip out to Wild Horse Island with a cow or two, a plow, some building supplies.

Nine years pass. The U.S. government auctions off more lots on the reservation. Colonel Almond A. White, a land speculator who hails from St. Paul, purchases more than half of these new lots, paying fifteen dollars an acre for most of the interior land on the island, and up to fifty dollars an acre for the villa sites along the shore. White is convinced he can double his money once his plans to develop the island are realized.

White hires two men to guide tourists visiting Glacier National Park south to Flathead Lake in a seven-passenger automobile. As they drive, the guides expound upon the wonders of Wild Horse Island. Sure, Glacier Park is beautiful, they say, but how would you like to own a piece of land in a place just as beautiful, no, even more beautiful?

At the docks, they meet the colonel. He wears a dapper cream-colored suit with a handkerchief in his breast pocket. The prospective buyers board a narrow white skiff named the Helen R and they sit, wide-eyed, as they listen to the colonel’s plans for Wild Horse Island. White points out where the fourteen miles of roads will soon go. He promises twenty miles of bridle paths. An observatory will be built up on Lakota Peak, just like the Lick Observatory in California. The skiff bobs around to the northeast side of the island. The Montana sun doubled again and again in tiny water mirrors. There will be a power plant. A hotel. An indoor swimming pool. The Natatorium, White calls it. Two ferries will make a circuit around the lake, each with the capacity to carry a thousand passengers and thirty automobiles. Can you imagine? The golf course, the yacht club. Colonel White sits in the stern, his hand on the rudder, steering the conversation this way and that, homing in on the closing. The tourists are impressed. They get off on the mainland, shake the colonel’s hand, and promise to be in touch.

But no one calls.

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