# Looters of the Public Domain/Chapter 1

Chapter I
By S. A. D. Puter
I WAS BORN January 6, 1837, in Trinity County, California. Two years later my parents moved to Humboldt County, in that State, where my father purchased the possessory title to a homestead claim on Mad River, about twenty miles north of Eureka. Here I was reared, leaving there in 1888 and moving to Oregon, living in Portland until 1903, at which time I took my family to Berkeley, California, where they now reside.
Our family consisted originally of three sons and four daughters, but of these, only four of the children survive—Lawrence F. Puter, an attorney of Eureka, California, and one of my counsels in the Township "11—7" case: Lucile, the youngest sister, wife of Robert Sawyer, of Los Angeles, California: Daniel, at present engaged in mining in the State of Idaho, and myself.
During 1861–62, when I was but five years old, the Indians broke out in Humboldt County. killing a number of farmers and stockmen while on the warpath, and burning and destroying a great deal of property belonging to the settlers thereabouts, our home being among the first to suffer in that respect, on account of its isolated position. After this episode, father moved the family into the town of Arcata. which is situated on Humboldt bay, twelve miles north of Eureka. and with a number of other men, formed a military company and inaugurated a vigorous campaign against the redmen, completely subduing them at the end of two years' fighting. In 1864 father went to Idaho and engaged in mining, leaving his family in Arcata. Two years later our claim was "jumped" by squatters, as we had never completed the title on account of the depredations of the Indians. As soon as my mother learned of the situation, she moved the family back on the place, where we lived in a shack during the summer and winter of 1866 and up to the fall of 1867, when my father returned from Idaho, remaining with us on the ranch until his death in 1886.
My educational advantages, as may be imagined, were very limited, and were confined to short terms in the public schools of Arcata during the summers of 1865-66. I was then but nine years old, and as we moved back on our ranch in 1866 I had no opportunity for attending school until 1873, and then only in the summer of that year and the year following, on account of the great distance the school house was from our ranch. Whatever knowledge I have acquired has been picked up in my business transactions throughout the country.
During father's absence in Idaho, the family experienced many hardships and privations. particularly so after being forced to return to the ranch, as the place had not been under cultivation for some years and we had no money with which to purchase farming implements of any consequence, depending entirely upon such work as could be done by hand in the way of raising garden stuff. We had no horses, nothing, in fact, in the livestock line but one cow. Fresh ​meat was an unknown quantity to the Puter family during- those days, except at such times as I might trap a quail or snare a cottontail rabbit, of which there was plenty to be found.
I had the good fortune, shortly after we returned to the farm, to kill a fine buck elk, that probably weighed upwards of 700 pounds. It had frequently shown himself at the edge of the timber, near the prairie where we lived and within a quarter of a mile from our shack. Our sole firearm consisted of an old Springfield musket, of the pattern used during the rebellion, and as I was only nine years old, my mother hesitated to allow me to try my luck, fearing that, should I only wound the big buck, he might turn and kill me. It was just at a time, however, when the smaller game had not been particularly plentiful and we felt that we must secure that meat— at least, that was my way of viewing the matter. Besides, I wanted to show the folks that I wasn't quite such a boy as they imagined, and the killing of that elk, in my mind, would place me on a par with the position I sought to occupy in my father's absence—that of being looked upon as "the man of the house." As his elkship was even now in sight, I pleaded so hard and convincingly regarding my ability to bring him down at first shot, that mother finally consented to my shouldering the old musket, and I was off.
Taking a circuitous route, I emerged from the timber in the rear of the point where I had last noticed the elk feeding, and crawled through the grass and weeds to within fifty paces of where he was standing, and where there was a mound of earth on which to rest the musket. No doubt it was placed there through providential kindness, as my arm was too short to reach around the stock of the gun and pull the trigger with my finger, so it became necessary for me to find a rest for the heavy musket before I could proceed with the work of execution. Having placed my gun in position. I took aim and fired, the ball striking the animal in the shoulder and killing him instantly. I did not move from my position until the smoke had commenced to clear away, and not observing the elk, I rushed to the spot where he was last standing, where I found him kicking on the ground and noted, happily, that my work had been complete.
My mother and sisters, who had been anxiously awaiting developments, and watching the elk from the shack, could see him fall at the crack of the gun, and, needless to state, they lost no time in coming to where I was standing, alongside that vanquished "king of the forest."
The excitement and joy that took possession of the Puter family for the time being was without limit. We all knew, of course, that there was meat enough in sight for many months to come, and incidentally, it might be said, mother patted her boy and complimented him for his prowess, for now, indeed,, he was a real man. The question then arose as to how we should get our prize to the shack, so we decided to quarter him first, but found, because of the great weight, that the combined strength of the entire family was not sufficient to drag a single quarter, say nothing about lifting it; so we were obliged to cut the meat up into smaller pieces, after which our nearest neighbor, who lived four miles distant, was notified of our good fortune, and he proceeded to Arcata for sufficient salt to cure the meat.
My first experience with the public domain occurred during the summer of 1875, at which time I was engaged as an axman by Deputy United States Surveyor Forman, who had a contract to subdivide several townships of timber land in the vicinity of our Humboldt county ranch. I became so proficient in my duties that after blazing the lines and marking the witness trees for a few months, I was placed in charge of a crew and manipulated the compass.
from the timber on the claim, the size of each cabin being 12 by 16 feet and 7 feet high, one window, board floor and wooden fireplace. There were no other signs of habitation or cultivation whatsoever, the building of the cabin being the only improvement made on a pre-emption or homestead claim in those days. The entrymen hardly ever slept over night there, although they made final proof within eight or ten months from the date of filing, wherein they alleged a continuous residence.
Soon after proof was made, I negotiated the sale of this tract to a Eureka capitalist for sums ranging from $800 to $1200 per claim. Later, the purchaser sold to the California Redwood Company for $25 per acre. The latter corporation transferred the tract to the Humboldt Mill & Lumber Company, which erected sawmills and commenced the manufacture of the timber into merchantable lumber. At the present time, the timber on these lands possesses an intrinsic value of from $200 to $300 per acre.
I gradually learned the business from the felling of a tree down to the rolling of a log from the landing into the mill pond. I worked in the redwoods, logging for some ten or twelve years, part of which time I engaged my services to others, while for several years I contracted on my own account and personally drove a twelve-horse team, hauling logs on a skid road to the landings.
The first big fraud under the Timber and Stone Act of June 3, 1878, that ever occurred on the Pacific Coast, was consummated in Humboldt County, California, during 1882-3. In 1876, Mr. Forman, the Deputy United States Surveyor for whom I had formerly worked, took a contract to survey a number of townships covered with a dense body of redwood timber in the northern part of Humboldt County. As soon as the land was surveyed and thrown open to entry, the California Redwood Company, with offices in Eureka, began to hire men to file on the entire tract under the Timber and Stone Act referred to. At that time, the persons desiring to avail themselves of .its provisions, were not required to make a personal examination of the portions they wished to file on, nor were they obliged to go to the land office to make final proof. All that was ​necessary in this connection was for the entryman to appear at the land office at the time of making the filing, exhibit his first papers to show that he was either a citizen of the United States, or had declared his intention to become such, or, in the case of his being a bona-fide citizen, to make oath to that effect, and his entry would be allowed. This law has since been amended, so as to necessitate the personal appearance of the entryman at the land office, both at the time of filing and when making final proof.
Under these conditions, the company was enabled to run men into the land office by the hundreds. I have known agents of the company to take at one time as many as twenty-five men from "Coffee Jack's" sailor boarding house in Eureka to the county court house, where they would take out their first papers, declare their intention to become citizens of the United States, after which they would proceed direct to the land office and make their filings, all the location papers having previously been made out. Then they would appear before Fred W. Bell, a notary public, and execute an acknowledgement of a blank deed, receive the stipulated price of $50, and return to their ships, or to the boardinghouse from whence they came. The description of the tract filed on was afterwards inserted and the transfer of title completed to the corporation. As fast as this land came into the market, the company gobbled it all up in this fashion, and as soon as the whole tract had been secured, they sent their representative, Edward Everdeen, who was then connected with the Humboldt County Bank, to England, where a sale of the entire body of land embraced in a number of different townships, was consummated to a Scotch syndicate.
Pending the transfer to the Scottish syndicate, the California Redwood Company was pulling out the patents to the different claims pretty fast, and at a cost of $25 each. Concluding that they could get the patents more quickly and at a cheaper figure, by sending their own attorney to Washington, D. C, they adopted this course, but it proved disastrous, as the General Land Office evidently became cognizant of the fact that there was an abnormal rush for the issuance of patents, and it excited their suspicions that a fraud was being perpetrated. In consequence, all the unpatented claims were suspended by order of the Commissioner of the General Land Office, and special agents sent out to investigate and report on the status of the entries.
The first agent that put in an appearance was soon picked up by the company at Eureka. His report to the Commissioner did not indicate that any frauds were being committed, and other agents that followed him told the same story, because they, too, had been bought off. Special Agent B. F. Bergin, the fourth one sent out, was made of the right kind of stuff, and could not be purchased, and as a result of his report to the General Land Office, between 150 and 200 of these entries were immediately suspended and were later cancelled altogether, involving the forfeiture of all moneys paid thereon, including the purchase price of $400 per claim, together with all land office fees. The $50 paid to each of the entrymen, of course, was also lost to the company, and while it was considered that these rights were purchased at a low figure, which would have been true had the deal gone through, the company was at no small loss on this account alone. The expense of maintaining their agents, too, amounted to a large sum of money, and while I would not care to venture a guess at the total amount squandered on this venture, it can safely be said that it aggregated a small fortune.
Many of the company's principal agents were indicted by the Federal grand jury because of their connection with the transaction, and their cases were carried through the courts from one administration to another at an enormous expense. These cancelled entries were afterwards filed on by bona-fide settlers residing throughout the county, they making final proofs and receiving patents to the same.
After the big frauds in Humboldt timber lands had been exposed, and the titles to the bogus entries suspended, and while the prosecutions against the company's agents were still pending, the whole county became seized with a feeling of depression and times were very dull there. I continued to work in the logging camps until 1888, when I decided to seek fresher pastures in Oregon.
Upon my arrival in the new field, I found the land business booming, every hotel in the timbered sections of the state being crowded with timber land speculators, cruisers and locators. I went into the locating business the first thing and continued to do a land office business for two years. This was in 1889 and 1890, and during all this time, the woods were fairly alive with timber men.
My earlier experiences in California enabled me to grasp conditions quite readily, and become acquainted with the most desirable tracts in short order; consequently I soon got into the swim. Moneyed men were here from Michigan, Wisconsin, Minnesota, and other Middle West States, eager to make investments and grasp the unlimited opportunities offered of reaping big returns, and as a result, thousands of men were sent into the forests of Tillamook and Clatsop Counties, Oregon, as well as throughout various sections of Washington, to file on timber claims, and in nearly every instance, the entrymen had contracted in advance to transfer their titles to some lumber company, or syndicate of Eastern capitalists.
The Timber and Stone Act of June 3, 1878, was the favorite method of acquiring title at that time, as the Forest Reserve Lieu Land Act of June 4, 1897, (commonly known as the "scripper law,") had not then gone into effect. ​and titles could be rushed through much quicker than by the pre-emption or homestead laws. Some state lieu land selections were made, but this form of "scrip," so called, was too scarce to be available for the purchase of large bodies of timber.
In the meantime, the timber lands continued to be turned over to the different lumber concerns, and the various land offices throughout Oregon had more business than they could conveniently attend to. As a matter of fact, the Oregon City Land Office was obliged to suspend business for several weeks, in order to catch up with the accumulated work, the timber filings were coming in so fast.
The increasing demand for patents at this office also aroused the suspicion of the officials at Washington, and special agents were sent into the field for the purpose of making investigations, wdiich action had the eft'ect of suspending a great many patents, as well as the holding for cancellation of a large number of entries. There was considerable talk of indictments by the Federal grand jury, and it had a tendency to m^ke the land business unpopular for the time being, the land grabbers having about all they could do to keep out of jail, as well as to preserve their titles. However, in spite of all the storm of indignation that seemed to have pervaded the Governmental atmosphere, there were comparatively few actual cancellations, the special agents, as usual, standing in with the land grabbers.
Out of all the howl about frauds in those days, there were but two convictions, Stone of Seattle, and Diamond of Portland, both of whom were locators — the former for subornation of perjury, and the latter for conspiracy. They represented the sole production of gems from the Government's operations, among the various gigantic mines of iniquity existing in those days. Allowing for the immense harvest which had been gathered in by these two men, and the moderate sentences imposed, their incarceration in the Government penitentiary was referred to as a trifling matter, for whatever the price they may have paid in the way of humiliation and lost time, as against the hoards they had amassed and deposited for their future comfort, it was often said of them that they had bargained well.
Thousands upon thousands of acres, which included the very cream of the timber claims in Oregon and Washington, were secured by Eastern lumbermen and capitalists, the majority of whom came from Wisconsin, Michigan and Alinncsota, and nearly all of these claims, to my certain knowledge, were fraudulently obtained.
As to the special agents sent out by the Government, they were picked up, each in turn, as they appeared upon the scene, and with the capitalists and locators standing hand in hand, it was an easy matter, with the aid of these agents, to baffle the Government in its attempt to secure evidence.