night overtook them they were glad to espy smoke curling from the chimney of some shanty among the foliage, and invari ably found welcome in the rude homes of the settlers. " The latch-string hung out." The settlers took no newspapers in those primitive days, and were delighted to enter tain the passing traveler, and learn the news. While the shanty was filled with the odors of frying pork, or, perchance, quail or prairie chicken, the guests told all the news of the day to the eager listeners. The bill of fare was often little more than pickled pork, po tatoes, and tea sweetened with maple sugar, and the table was of the rudest; but the meal was a banquet to the journey-worn guests, and the conversation was refresh ment to the host and hostess, living in the lonely exile of the pioneer. There was little intemperance in those days. " I have trav eled," says Judge Andrew G. Miller, " per haps ten thousand miles in this Territory, and have no recollection of having seen the proprietor of a log cabin setting a bottle of spirituous liquor before his guests. In the villages, men would occasionally take a little something for the stomach's sake. And, sometimes, in the villages, an article called whiskey was sold to the Indians, in violation of law, but the vendors eased their con sciences, upon drawing a certain portion from the spigot, by adding the same quantity of water through the bunghole. By this proc ess the mass in the barrel became so much diluted as to be neither whiskey nor water, but both, and scarcely of sufficient strength to intoxicate a half-starved Indian." The guests slept on the floor of the cabin on a shakedown, or ascended by a ladder into the loft. A blanket or buffalo robe hung up as a screen made a sufficient divi sion of rooms or partition to separate the guests from the family. Much of the litigation in the territorial days arose in this wise : Before the public
lands were brought into market by the Pres ident's proclamation, the settlers, by mutual, tacit consent, adopted the rule that he who first entered on a quarter section of land, or a fraction of a section, gained a " squatter's right," and was protected in his possession against " jumpers " of his claim. The settlers had a code of their own. When complaint was made that the claim of a settler had been "jumped," the jumper was summoned before a committee of settlers. A summary hearing was had. The only points passed on were actual settlement and the intrusion of the jumper. This rude and effectual action of ejectment served its purpose, as the judgment of the committee was final, and the whole community, gathered from miles around, were the posse to enforce the execu tion. It sometimes happened that the set lers on these claims would sell out their in terest, and take therefor the obligation of some newcomer. The purchasers then, in the belief that, as the original settlers were mere trespassers on the public lands, with no interest that could be conveyed, the con tracts were void for being without considera tion, refused to be bound by them. Many of these obligations were sued upon, and formed a considerable part of the calendars of the district courts. The courts, however, held the contracts valid, notwithstanding the settler might strictly be regarded in the light of a trespasser on the public lands. Where the government had not ousted the squatter or his purchaser, and he had made some im provements or done some work on the land, the courts ruled that the settler's rule should have the force of law. Another usage re ceived the sanction of the courts: the miner who prospected for and discovered minerals claimed the right to work the mine he had located, subject to a certain royalty to the owner of the land. But these usages and rulings of the courts were soon super seded by territorial statutes on the subject.
