Cabin rights

Cabin rights and tomahawk rights were processes of claiming land in North America during pre-19th-century settlement on the Northwest and Appalachian frontiers.

To claim tomahawk rights, the claimant typically deadened several trees near the head of a spring, then blazed the bark of one or more of them with their initials or name.

Tomahawk rights gave the settler no legal title unless followed by occupation or a warrant and a patent secured from the land office. But the Tomahawk rights were quite generally recognized by the early settlers, and many of them were purchased cheaply by other settlers who did not want to enter into a controversy with the claimants who made them.

Building a cabin and raising a crop of grain of any kind, however small, led to cabin rights, which were recognized not only by custom but also 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 pre-emption 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.

...
Wikipedia