Enos Stutsman (born in what is now Fayette County, Indiana, February 14, 1826; died Pembina, Dakota Territory, January 24, 1874) was an American lawyer, politician, government official, and land speculator.
Stutsman was born to a frontier family of German ancestry; his grandfather Jacob had settled in Pennsylvania in 1728, and his father Nicholas was living in Indiana at the time of his birth, but soon moved west.
[1] Stutsman's life on the frontier was particularly remarkable because he was born with only stubs of legs – some sources speculate that he had phocomelia – and reportedly moved around using crutches and wagons.
In 1836 the family moved to Coles County, Illinois, near the home of Abraham Lincoln's father, and Stutsman was educated there.
Stutsman visited Louis Riel a number of times, but failed to convince him of the advantages of American annexation.