The law in early Fargo had its amusing moments. H. S. Back, justice of the peace, after performing the first wedding ceremony, invested his $3 fee in drinks for the crowd. The next day he tried his first case, found the prisoner guilty, and fined him $15 and costs. Informed by the prisoner's attorney that there was only $5 in sight, he changed the fine to $5 and no costs. At this time Fargo was still Indian territory, and the Lake Superior and Puget Sound Company, hoping to regain possession of the town site, informed the Government that residents of the Timber were illegally located on Indian lands, and were also selling liquor. On the evening of February 16, 1872, troops passed through the city and camped for the night near General Rosser's headquarters on the Prairie. The troops, it was said, were on their way west to fight Indians, but a commotion before daylight the next morning awakened the Timber to find soldiers stationed before the door of each dwelling. All residents of the community were arrested and taken to the tent that served as a temporary jail, and those for whom the soldiers had warrants for selling liquor were removed to Pembina for trial. The others were ordered to leave the city lest their property be confiscated and burned and they be removed by force. They were not so easily defeated, however, and appealed to the Government for their land rights. A treaty was made with the Indians whereby the land was opened to settlement and those residents of the Timber who were guilty of no other offense were allowed to hold their land according to their original claims. From a virgin prairie land where the Sioux battled the Chippewa, the terrain around Fargo became a rich farming country, well peopled and with acres of land sown to wheat. As late as 1868 the Red River Valley was generally believed to be a barren country, and in the early seventies Cass County was still a Sioux reservation. The first wheat sown by the acre was harvested in 1872, and there was barely enough grain to make bread for the few people in the vicinity. James Holes, whose farm was one mile north of the Northern Pacific depot in what is now Holes' addition to the city of Fargo, complained to the railroad that the exorbitant freight rate of 30c a bushel from Fargo to Duluth made wheat raising unprofitable for anything but local consumption. Freight rates were reduced in 1873, and Holes' 175-acre crop brought him nearly $5,000 in 1876 and by 1893 he was harvesting a 1,600-acre tract. Bonanza farms, demonstrating the profit in large scale wheat raising, were largely responsible for the enormous increase in acreage and the equally large gain in population through immigration.