Cabin Rights

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At an early period in the settlement of the Frontier, pioneers asserted their claims to parts of wild lands by blazing trees around the desired boundary, and later comers customarily recognized the claims: tomahawk rights, they were called. Building a cabin and raising a crop, however small, of grain of any kind, led to "cabin rights," which were recognized not only customarily but by law. The laws of the colonies and states varied in their requirements of the settler. In Virginia the occupant was entitled to 400 acres (1.6 km²) of land and to a preemption right to 1,000 acres (4 km²) more adjoining, to be secured in either case by a land-office warrant, the basis of a later patent or grant from colonial or state authorities.