352 Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts, and Letters . 
Guthrie, where a veritable conspiracy was planned by the mar¬ 
shals and their friends. Some of the marshals used their ap¬ 
pointive power to make deputies of all their friends and rela¬ 
tives, and each one of these registered a choice claim when the 
land office was opened at noon. Many of the miost valuable 
claims around the site of Guthrie were filed on by relatives and 
friends of the register at the Guthrie office, who afterward ad¬ 
mitted that he knew they were in the territory before the open¬ 
ing and had thereby sacrificed their rights to make entry. 1 The 
attempted looting of the town-site of Guthrie by the a sooners” 
and their official friends has already been referred to, and the 
way in which their plans were in a measure defeated by the 
rush of honest homeseekers. A great deal of confusion in re¬ 
gard to town-sites was due to a defect in the law. The act of 
March 2, 1889, provided that tovm-site entries might, be per¬ 
mitted after the opening, in accordance with sections 2387 and 
2388 of the revised statutes ; but these sections provide that ap¬ 
plication should be made through certain town or county offi¬ 
cers, and there were no such in Oklahoma nor any power to 
create them. So nothing could be settled without further leg¬ 
islation, and the land officers were instructed simply to receive 
all applications for town-sites and report them to the general 
office without taking any action. 2 
As soon as the Interior department became aware of the situa¬ 
tion in Oklahoma a commission was sent out to investigate, and 
it reported in June 1890 that a great number of town lots and 
other claims were in the possession of “sooners” who had been 
in the territory previous to the opening. These, had secured 
their certificates and in some cases had sold them to others who 
were now claiming the lots.. The department was. kept busy 
for a long time settling contested claims, and although justice 
in every case was not to be expected, an effort seems to have 
been made to get at the true situation and deprive the a sooners” 
of their unjust possessions. A ruling of the department to the 
effect that the provision in regard to homesteading by those 
1 House Ex. Doc., 209, 51 Cong., 1 Sess - . 
2 Sec. Int. Rept., 1889, vol. 1, p. vii. 
