saving and excepting the lands set aside and reserved at each of said county seats for disposition as townsites, and saving and excepting the lands now used, occupied, or set apart for military, agency, school, school farm, religious, Indian cemetery, wood reserve, forest reserve, or other public uses, will, on the 6th day of August, 1901, at 9 o’clock A.M., in the manner herein prescribed and not otherwise, be opened to entry and settlement and to disposition under the general provisions of the homestead and townsite laws of the United States.

Commencing at 9 o’clock A.M., Wednesday, July 10, 1901, and ending at 6 o’clock P.M., Friday, July 26, 1901, a registration will be had at the United States land offices at El Reno and Lawton, in the Territory of Oklahoma (the office at Lawton to occupy provisional quarters in the immediate vicinity of Fort Sill, Oklahoma Territory, until suitable quarters can be provided at Lawton), for the purpose of ascertaining what persons desire to enter, settle upon, and acquire title to any of said lands under the homestead law and of ascertaining their qualifications so to do.  The registration at each office will be for both land districts, but at the time of registration each applicant will be required to elect and state in which district he desires to make entry.  To obtain registration each applicant will be required to show himself duly qualified to make homestead entry of these lands under existing laws and to give the registering officer such appropriate matters of description and identity as will protect the applicant and the government against any attempted impersonation.  Registration cannot be effected through the use of the mails or the employment of an agent, excepting that honorably discharged soldiers and sailors entitled to the benefits of section 2304 of the Revised Statutes of the United States, as amended by the act of Congress approved March 1, 1901 (31 Stat., 847), may present their applications for registration and due proofs of their qualifications through an agent of their own selection, but no person will be permitted to act as agent for more than one such soldier or sailor.  No person will be permitted to register more than once or in any other than his true name.  Each applicant who shows himself duly qualified will be registered and given a non-transferable certificate to that effect, which will entitle him to go upon and examine the lands to be opened hereunder in the land district in which he elects to make his entry; but the only purpose for which he may go upon and examine said lands is that of enabling him later on, as herein provided, to understandingly select the lands for which he will make entry.  No one will be permitted to make settlement upon any of said lands in advance of the opening herein provided for, and during the first sixty days following said opening no one but registered applicants will be permitted to make homestead settlement upon any of said lands, and then only in pursuance of a homestead entry duly allowed by the local land officers or of a soldier’s declaratory statement duly accepted by such officers.