There remain 62,526.79 acres upon which final proof has not yet been made and upon which, of course, no interest attaches. Using the foregoing data, the liability of the United States to the Chippewa Indians of Minnesota is as follows: For payment for 824,622.91 acres at $1.25 per acre. For payment for 62,526.79 acres on which final proof has not been Total amount due to Dec. 31, 1922. Mr. HASTINGS. What is the date? Mr. HUDSON. December 31, 1922. Mr. HASTINGS. There is another year since that. $1, 030, 778. 67 678, 814. 20 78, 158. 49 1, 787, 751. 36 Mr. KNUTSON. That was made up to a year ago, I was going to say. Mr. HUDSON. The report continues as follows: The Chippewa Indians of Minnesota, therefore, are entitled as of December 31, 1922, to the sum above named, with interest on the said amount at the rate of 5 per cent per annum, from December 31, 1922, and the bill, as drafted, provides for the payment of these sums. After these years of delay, the department feels that prompt settlement should be made with the Indians and, therefore, recommends the bill to the favorable consideration of your committee and to the Congress. Very truly yours, HUBERT WORK. Mr. BURKE. I believe that it would be very desirable for you to consider the details of this bill, and to permit me to make a statement with reference to this Chippewa situation generally, in connection with H. R. 26. Mr. HUDSON. Yes, we will permit you to make your statement. Mr. BURKE. In addition to H. R. 26 there are several other bills pending. Mr. ROACH. In regard to this item for 62,526.79 acres, on which final proof has not yet been made, $78,158.49, which is included in the bill, what is the condition of the final proofs? Are they in process of final proof being made or the homesteads cancelled? Mr. BURKE. That is a detail I was going to explain when I discuss the bill. If you will permit me to make a general statement I will be glad to cover it. Mr. ROACH. Yes. I just wanted information on that particular point. Mr. BURKE. Members of this committee, especially those who have served heretofore, are quite familar with the fact that there has been, in every session of Congress, presented proposed bills with reference to the Chippewa Indians of Minnesota, and a certain attorney here in the city has been very active in promoting a bill which had, for its principle purpose, to create a jurisdictional law to enable the Chippewa Indians to go into the Court of Claims and sue the Government. Originally, there was the Ellsworth bill, then we have the Knutson bill, later the Schall bill, and in the present Congress the Wefald bill. None of those bills, at any time, ever have received a favorable report-at least, that is my recollection-from either a committee of the House or a committee of the Senate. In the last Congress the matter was considered by this committee with reference to the claim of the attorney for services rendered the Chippewas under an alleged contract made with the so-called " general council of the Chippewa Indians of Minnesota," which provided for paying him $6,000 a year, and it was unanimously rejected. When I came in as Commissioner of Indian Affairs I found that there were many matters affecting these Indians, where the Government was unquestionably indebted to them under the law and the agreement of 1889, and that, apparently, there had been no direct effort to get their claims adjudcated except the one I have indicated of wanting a jurisdictional bill to go into the Court of Claims. The 1889 agreement with the Chippewas specified how the land should be disposed of and the proceeds to go into the Treasury to the credit of the Indians and bear 5 per cent interest. Also there was legislation with reference to the sale of timber and different acts were passed, one of them, I think, being known as the Morris Act. Mr. KNUTSON. Yes. Mr. BURKE. Another was known as the Steenerson Act, and the final act of 1908. Who introduced that bill? Mr. KNUTSON. That was the Steenerson Act. Mr. COFFEY. The 1908 act is the Morris Act, creating a national forest reserve. Mr. BURKE. The 1908 act created a forest reserve. Mr. KNUTSON. It could not have been the Morris Act, 1908, because Morris was not here in 1908. It is the Steenerson Act. Mr. BURKE. The act of 1908 created a forest reservation and in the law there is a provision authorizing the appointment of a commission to appraise the timber on 10 sections, Pine Point and Star Island, which timber was to be left standing. Also to appraise the value of the 5 and 10 per cent timber that was left standing on the cut-over portion of the foest reserve, as the timber was removed. Mr. KNUTSON. The 5 or 10 per cent timber that was left standing was for the purpose of reseeding. Mr. BURKE. It was a part of the reforestration program of the Bureau of Forestry, and the amount of the appraisement of the timber, together with the $1.25 per acre, for the land, the Secretary of the Treasury was directed to place to the credit of the Chippewa Indians, which amount would draw 5 per cent interest thereafter in accordance with the terms of the original agreement and act of 1889. Mr. HUDSON. The $1.25 was per acre on this forest reserve set aside. Mr. BURKE. On the forest reserve. That was an arbitrary price. Mr. HASTINGS. I was going to ask you, did the act of 1889 provide for the sale of land or did it provide for patents. Mr. BURKE. The act of 1889 provided that the agricultural lands should be disposed of under the homestead law, to be paid for at the rate of $1.25 an acre. Mr. HUDSON. On the issuance of the patent." Mr. BURKE, As to lands classified as timber, how would that be disposed of? Mr. COFFEY. To be disposed of at not less than $3 per 1,000 feet. Mr. BURKE. I am speaking of the land. Mr. COFFEY. The land was to go with the timber. Mr. BURKE. The original act provided that timber should be disposed of at not less than a certain price, and the land was to go with the timber. Mr. COFFEY. The land was to go with the timber. Mr. BURKE. The act of 1908 limited the time within which this commission was appointed to a period of 10 days to make the appraisement, and no provision, as I recall, was incorporated in the law to pay for the expenses of the commission. I found, after becoming Commissioner of Indian Affairs, that the commission had never been appointed and no such appraisement had been made, and I had in mind some legislation to extend the period within which the appraisement could be made to provide an appropriation to pay for that appraisement; and the House, in the Indian appropriation bill, incorporated an item, as I recall, and it went out in the Senate at the instance of the attorney who has been so solicitous to get legislation for the Chippewa Indians. We then created a commission within the department, consisting of one member of the Chippewa Tribe, one representative from the Interior Department, and the third member from the Bureau of Forestry. That commission spent many weeks in the Chippewa country, not only making an appraisement but in addition making a survey of the whole reservation situation for the purpose of giving us information. After it had completed its work and was ready to make its report, then they were appointed as a commission under the act of 1908 to do the things that the act of 1908 authorized might be done, and within the 10 days' period they made their report. The member of that commission of the Chippewa Tribe was selected at a meeting of the tribe, in a council called regularly at Cass Lake, the law providing, if you will examine it, that the tribe should also have a representative who might, within 60 days after the report of this commission was filed, appeal to the President, and that same tribal council elected Mr. Rogers, of Walker, Minn., a member of the tribe and a lawyer, and a very good lawyer, and he appealed from the decision of the report of the appraisers, which had been approved by the Secretary to the President, and the President approved; that is, sustained the department. That appraisement showed that the Indians were entitled to receive $1,430,000, approximately; just a little under $1,500,000. Then the question arose as to whether or not under the statute of 1908 the Secretary of the Treasury could place to the credit of these Indians that amount of money without an appropriation by Congress, and, after some effort and conference with the comptroller, a ruling was made that it might be placed to the credit of the tribe, and thereafter, some time during the summer of 1923, this amount was credited to the Chippewa Tribe. In connection with that there is a bill pending here for interest on some part of that amount, and we will explain why it is not on all of it when that bill comes up for consideration on the theory that the act of 1908, which required this appraisement to be made and those lands to be paid for at $1.25 an acre, and the proceeds to draw 5 per cent interest, ought not to have been postponed until 1922 or 1923, and therefore that the Indians should have interest from some time after 1908, allowing a reasonable time within which to accomplish what the act required. Mr. ROACH. In the act of 1908 was there any fixed time when this commission was to be appointed? Mr. BURKE. It did not state; simply "a commission to be appointed." Mr. HASTINGS. It contemplated at that time or within a reasonable time. Mr. BURKE. It was not the intention to take land from the Indians at $1.25 an acre in 1908 and not pay them until 1922. That would not be good faith. Mr. ROACH. I asked the question because you spoke in your first statement of having under consideration the presenting of a bill to extend the provisions of that law relative to the appointment of a commission. Mr. BURKE. The purpose of that was when we examined the 1908 law I found that the appraisement had to be made within 10 days, and that there was no money provided to pay for the expenses of the appraisement. Mr. ROACH. What do you mean by within 10 days? Do you mean within 10 days of the time that you went into office? Mr. BURKE. No. The commission had to do this work and make its report within 10 days. Mr. HASTINGS. It had only 10 days to do it in. Mr. BURKE. It was absolutely a physical impossibility. So we appointed this commission that did that work within two or three months-a commission in our department. Then there was formally appointed, as the act of 1908 provides, a commission which made its report in 10 days. The work of the commission had already been done in advance. Mr. HUDSON. This discourse that you have been giving is not upon this agricultural land in H. R. 26. It is really in the bill H. R. 27. Mr. BURKE. Yes; but to save time I give you this little statement generally, covering the different items. What we have striven to do is to have the Government keep faith at this late date with the Indians without having to pay some attorney 10 per cent or any other sum for recovering moneys which are manifestly due those Indians. Mr. ROACH. Those funds are on deposit to the credit of the Indians, are they not? Mr. BURKE. Certainly not. Mr. ROACH. What was this $1,500,000 placed to their credit? Mr. BURKE. That was placed to their credit as the result of this appraisement under the act of 1908. That is to their credit and drawing 5 per cent interest now. Mr. KNUTSON. That is national forest up there? Mr. BURKE. Nobody has received anything out of that. It is net to the Indians. That is not this bill. Another matter in which the Indians claim they had been wronged was that certain lands within their reservation had been patented to the State of Minnesota as 'swamp lands," a very large area, and this effort to get a jurisdictional bill had that item as one of the things that would have formed a basis of a suit against the Government. We were able to get the Secretary to recommend to the Attorney General of the United States that this case could be brought in the court without any jurisdictional bill, and the Attorney General concurred with the Secretary, and a suit is now pending in the United States Supreme Court to recover for these Indians the value of these lands which were said to have been inadvertently or illegally patented as "swamp lands," and the suit is being prosecuted by the Solicitor for the Department of Justice, and is, I think, about to be submitted to the So that has been taken care of. court. Mr. HASTINGS. Is there a technical jurisdictional question involved? Mr. BURKE. No, sir; that question is not raised and the case is simply going to be determined upon the law. I have stated that under the original law those lands that were disposed of as agricultural lands were to be taken by homesteaders and they were to pay therefor $1.25 an acre, which money was to go to the credit of the United States and draw 5 per cent interest. That is the law of 1889. Mr. HUDSON. That is the law. Mr. BURKE. May 17, 1900, Congress passed what is known as the free homes act, which act relieved the settlers who had filed on homesteads, either on the public domain or in what were originally Indian reservations, from paying the price that the law fixed, which varied from, I think, in Oklahoma $1.50 an acre, to in Yankton Reservation, S. Dak., $3.75 an acre, and in the Sisseton Reservation, S. Dak., it was $2.50 an acre; the Sioux Reservation in South Dakota and North Dakota, $1.25 down to 50 cents an acre; and in the Chippewa country, $1.25 an acre. The law provided that where the money paid by a homesteader was to go to the credit of the Indian tribe that the Government would assume the liability and pay for the land; otherwise the Indian would be giving his land to the homesteader, which would not be fair, and so the pending bill that is to compensate the Indians for what they would have received, and did not receive, had the free homestead act not passed. We took this position: We felt that, technically, when the act of May 17, 1900, passed and the settler was relieved from the obligation of paying the balance that was due from him per acre for the land, and the Government by the law having assumed that responsibility, and the language in the bill providing that all sums of money so released, which, if not released, would belong to any Indian tribe, shall be paid to such Indian tribe by the United States-that being the language in the law, we contended that the obligation was complete when that law passed, and that the Government ought to pay for these lands as of date May 17, 1900. The Secretary's office, however, assumed the position that the Government ought not to pay for it in advance of when it would have been paid had the settlers complied with the law, and so it was suggested, and that plan was followed in making a report, that we would begin with the first year-this act was passed May 17, 1900beginning with the date of June 30, 1900, and take each year as to the amount of land that was proved up on, which we have done right down to the year 1922, as you will see, and then upon such amounts for each year compute the interest at 5 per cent which, of course, is fair, and therefore the bill, with the exception of the amount Mr. Roach asked about at the opening, will simply compensate the Indians for the amount of money that would have gone to their credit each year, assuming that the person who made entry had made final proof at the same time. The 62,526.79 acres have not been proved upon. Some of it may not have been filed upon, but we believe that any legislation now to pay the Indians for the lands that they were to receive, assuming that they were homesteaded at $1.25 an acre, that we ought to include this 62,000 acres to clean |