356 Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts, and Letters. 
Iowa, Sac and Fox, and Pottawatomie and Shawnee reserva¬ 
tions to settlement after twelve o’clock noon, September 22nd. 1 
All lands in Oklahoma had been free to homesteaders up to 
this time, but the act of May 2, 1890, which organized the ter¬ 
ritory, provided that when any lands purchased from the In¬ 
dians should thereafter be opened, the settler should pay the 
United States a sum per acre equal to the amount paid by the 
United States to extinguish the Indian title but in no case less 
than a dollar and a quarter. In accordance with this law, 
the homesteaders on these newly-opened lands were obliged to 
pay from a dollar and a quarter to a dollar and a half per acre 
for their farms. This act also provided that “no person who 
shall at the time be seized in fee simple of one hundred and 
sixty acres of land in any state or territory, shall hereafter be 
entitled to enter land in said Territory of Oklahoma.” 
In spite of these restrictions, twenty thousand people gathered 
on the borders of the reservation in anticipation of the opening, 
and when the signal was given the rush which took place was 
similar to that of 1889. Every available quarter-section was 
taken for a homestead before sunset of the opening day. 2 3 Res¬ 
ervations had been made for county-seats at Tecumseh and 
Chandler, and when these were opened during the next few 
days the usual wild scramble for lots took place. There were five 
thousand people awaiting the signal to enter and only twenty- 
four hundred lots at each place. A great many speculators 
and others who had no intention of settling on the site took 
part in the rush and then sold their claims to lots to the honest 
settlers who wished to make homes on them. The evils 
of this system of opening town-sites were so great that the Sec¬ 
retary of the Interior recommended that in future openings 
the lots should be sold by the government at a low valuation. 5 
However, with the advantage of a territorial organization al¬ 
ready established, and with careful management on the part of 
the officers, the second opening in Oklahoma was on the whole 
1 Sec. Int. Rept., 1891, vol. 1, p. iv. 
2 Ibid. 
3 Ibid., vol. 3, p. 453. 
