Perhaps someone familiar with Indian treaties can help explain this one. It appears that an 1889 treaty opened more than 76,000 acres of Fond du Lac land to settlement:

LAND SEEKERS IN LINE

ONE-LEGGED MAN IS FIRST AT
DULUTH OFFICE

H.C. Osborne of Schroeder, Minn.,
Leads at Cass Lake – Forty Have
Already Taken Their Places to
Wait For Opening of Fond du Lac
Reservation Lands.

DULUTH, Minn., Aug. 8 – The first man has taken his place in line at the door of the United States land office for filing on lands in the Fond Du Lac reservation, which will be opened on Tuesday, Aug. 15, at 9 o’clock.

He is H.C. Osborne of Schroeder, Minn., and has but one leg. From now until Tuesday of next week he will live at the door of the land office, sleeping there and having his meals brought to him. Before the week is out this line may be augmented to large proportions.

CASS LAKE, Minn., Aug. 8 – Chris Regge is the first man in line at the door of the United States land office at Cass Lake, and he says it will take $1,500 to get his place and the minutes of the piece of land he designs filing upon. He will have held his position at the door of the land office fifteen days when the day for filing on the Fond du Lac lands arrives. There are now forty in line.

The fact the prospective settlers are in line at the Cass Lake land office, prepared to stay there and sleep on the floor in the corridor for two weeks from the time they first took up positions, is considered ample proof that they are in earnest and have some good land in prospect.

It is expected that the line will begin forming at the Duluth land office any day now. Cloquet and Carlton are filled with homeseekers. Among them are some veteran landseekers, who have been disappointed in land rushes at other points and have arrived in the regulation prairie schooner.

Squatters on the lands will be arrested as trespassers, and they will not have any rights at the land office over the man who first submits his filing. There is a large amount of fertile and well-watered land in the districts to be open.

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