the papers were accordingly presented to Congress. (See Senate Ex. Doc. No. 111, Forty-ninth Congress, second session.)

On February 21, 1888, the House passed a bill (H. R. 6364) which had substantially the same objects in view as the bill recommended by this Department. A résumé of its provisions is as follows:

(1) That with consent of the Indians severally to whom patents of lands have been issued the Secretary may have said lands appraised and sold.

(2) That the land is to be appraised as if in a state of nature, at an average of not more than $6 per acre.

(3) That the Secretary is to offer it for sale in tracts not exceeding 200 acres.

(4) That the limit of purchase by any one person is to be 200 acres. (5) That settlers in good faith who have put valuable improvements on the land may for six months have preference in purchase of 200 acres at the appraised value.

(6) That purchasers other than settlers are to pay to settlers the appraised value of improvements on the lands purchased.

(7) That out of the proceeds of the land shall be paid back to Thomas Carney such sums as he shall show, by competent evidence, that he actually paid to the Indians severally.

On September 20, 1888, the Senate Committee on Indian Affairs reported this House bill (6364) with an amendment, striking out all after the enacting clause, and substituting therefor the following:

That the Attorney-General of the United States shall be, and he is hereby, instructed to cause a suit in equity to be brought in the name of the United States, in the circuit court for the district of Kansas, to quiet and finally settle the title to the lands claimed by or under the Black Bob band of Shawnee Indians in Kansas, or adversely to said titles.

All persons having any claims to said lands, or any part thereof, as well as said band of Indians, shall be made parties to said suit, either personally or by representation, as said court may deem convenient, consistently with justice to all the interests involved, and notice of the institution and pendency of said suit, and for the appearance of the parties thereto shall be given, either by personal service or by such publication as the court may order, or both.

It shall be the duty of the Attorney-General to cause the rights of said band of Indians, and of the individual members thereof, to be duly presented and protected in said suit, and he shall employ counsel to aid in such protection; and any other claimants to said lands, or any part thereof, may appear in said cause personally or by counsel, to defend the same and assert their rights; and said court shall, upon proof and hearing, proceed to determine according to the principles of law and equity, all questions arising in respect to said lands, or any part thereof, and decree accordingly, and cause such decree to be carried into execution, and the possession of the lands or parts thereof, respectively, to be delivered to the persons entitled thereto; and upon a final decision of said matters it shall be the duty of the Secretary of the Interior to approve deeds for said lands in conformity to such decision. No objections shall be allowed in said suit in respect to want or misjoinder of parties other than such as are required in this act, or for multifariousness or want of form. The right of appeal to the Supreme Court of the United States shall exist as in other cases. SEC. 2. That all the provisions of the above section, including those as to notifica

tion of parties, as far as the same may be applicable, are hereby extended to all conveyances and transfers of land within the jurisdiction of the United States circuit court for the district of Kansas acquired under Indian treaties with the United States, and covered by deeds of Indian allottees and patentees which the Secretary of the Interior has refused to approve. The said circuit court is hereby empowered and required, in cases properly before it, to hear and determine all questions of inheritance to any of said lands, determine the rightful heirs thereto, and the interest of each heir in and to any such lands; in cases where money has been paid, advanced, or deposited for the transfer of any lands and the title thereto for any cause fails or is imperfect, the said circuit court shall inquire and determine as to the rightful application of any such money paid, advanced, or deposited, and shall make such orders, judgments, or decrees in relation thereto as will protect the rights of innocent parties consistently with justice to all interests involved; and said circuit court shall, in all cases properly before it, hear, try, settle, and determine all controversies or disputes between occupants on said lands and the owners or holders of the titles to the same; and all other controversies or disputes in regard to the transfer of any of said lands, the said circuit court shall hear and determine, in every case, according to the principles of law and equity, and enter up judgments, orders, and decrees accordingly, and enforce the same, and on final hearing apportion the costs among the parties as the equity of the case may require.

That the joint resolution of March third, eighteen hundred and seventy-nine, entitled "Joint resolution instructing the Attorney-General of the United States to bring suit in the name of the United States, to quiet and settle the titles of the Black Bob band of Shawnee Indians," be, and the same is hereby, repealed: Provided, That this act shall not be so construed as to affect the validity of any decree heretofore rendered by the United States circuit court for the district of Kansas, under the provisions of said joint resolution, or to impair the power of said court to set aside or amend or correct any such decree, or to divest any party in interest of his right to appeal to the United States Supreme Court within the time limited by law.

Section 1 of the above amended bill is in the exact wording of the joint resolution of March 3, 1879 (20 Stat., 488), which the bill proposes to repeal, except that the joint resolution provides that "upon a final decision of said matters it shall be the duty of the President to issue patents for said lands," while the proposed bill, above quoted, provides that the Secretary of the Interior shall approve deeds for said lands.

In reporting this substitute for the House bill, the Senate committee stated

(1) That to obtain the consent of the Indian patentees or their heirs to the proposed sales might involve trouble, expense, and delay.

(2) That the methods used to obtain such consent might themselves be questionable, and raise suspicion of fraud or misrepresentation. (3) That the limitation of $6 per acre is purely arbitrary and may be unjust.

(4) That it is intended that the methods provided in the joint resolution of March 3, 1879, shall apply in the settlement of cases not reached in that suit and to phases of cases not presented in it, and shall also extend to Indian lands other than Black Bob lands, whose titles are yet unestablished.

(5) That if referred to a court, the principles of law and equity would be applied to the cases and the rights of the Indians would be represented by the Attorney-General.

(6) That under the present law when the Secretary of the Interior refuses approval of a deed the status of the land is left under a cloud, and there is nowhere competent jurisdiction to remove it.

In these statements this office concurs, and expresses the opinion that the Senate substitute should be enacted.

UNITED STATES COURTS IN THE INDIAN TERRITORY.

There are now pending in Congress seven bills, all having for their object the establishment of United States judicial authority over the Indian Territory, in which no court now has jurisdiction in civil cases between Indians and other persons, and in a large part of which no court has criminal jurisdiction, section 9 of the act of March 3, 1885, being defective in this respect. That section extends over Indian reservations located in Territories in which territorial governments exercise jurisdiction under authority of Congress, the criminal laws of those Territories, and the authority of their courts; but there is no territorial government within the Indian Territory; and outside of the Five Civilized Tribes there are no courts. A bill (H. R. 1204) conferring, in certain cases arising in that Territory, civil jurisdiction on the United States courts, that now or hereafter may exercise criminal jurisdiction over said Territory, passed the House of Representatives during the last session, but was adversely reported from the Senate Committee on Judiciary, and was indefinitely postponed. A bill "conferring jurisdiction on the United States courts over the Indian country in certain criminal cases," is now pending in the House of Representatives.

DISPUTED CITIZENSHIP IN THE CHEROKEE NATION.

On March 1, 1885, in the case of the eastern band of Cherokees vs. The United States and the Cherokee Nation (117 U. S., 311) the Supreme Court rendered a decision that the Cherokee Nation had sole power to determine all claims, based on blood or descent, to citizenship in that nation.

On August 11 following, Agent Owen, of the Union Agency, was instructed to stop issuing what were known at that time as prima facie certificates of citizenship in the Cherokee Nation, and he was directed to give general notice that after that date no such claimants to citizenship could enter the nation by any authority or recognition of the Indian Bureau.

In passing upon claims to citizenship instituted prior to August 11, 1886, the Cherokee authorities have not only decided many such claims adversely, and denounced the claimants as intruders and demanded that the Department remove them, but they have gone farther and have forcibly deported such claimants and have seized their improvements, which they have sold at public auction, ostensibly for the benefit of the deported claimants, but usually at one-tenth of the actual value thereof.

For some time the Department would not accept as final the decision of the Cherokee Nation against claimants to citizenship who entered the nation prior to August 11, 1886, and declined to treat such claimants as intruders until it could determine for itself whether they were actually intruders or not. But by letter of August 21, 1888, in the Kesterson case, the Department has determined that it will accept the decision of the Cherokee authorities against this class of claimants, as fixing their status as intruders in that nation to be dealt with in accordance with the provisions of article 27 of the treaty of 1866 (14 Stat., 806). The claimants must, however, be dealt with as intruders in the light of the facts in each particular case, and reasonable time and opportunity must be given each one (in view of all the circumstances of residence and labor there) to dispose of or to remove his property.

The belief is expressed that the nation will not wantonly abuse its almost unlimited power on the subject of citizenship, and that the plan provided by the Department in the Kesterson case for modifying harsh judgments and unjust decisions may be executed without friction, and that, consequently, no action of Congress in the matter will be neces sary.

FREEDMEN IN THE CHICKASAW NATION.

On May 8 last, Commissioner Atkins submitted to the Department a report giving at length the history of the freedmen in the Chickasaw Nation, covering the points set forth in the last annual report of this Bureau, and also forwarding a draft of a bill for the relief of said. freedmen. On May 9 the Department submitted the same for the consideration and action of Congress. (Senate Ex. Doc. No. 166, Fiftieth Congress, first session.) Beyond reference to the Senate Committee on Indian Affairs, it does not appear that any action has been taken upon the subject by that body.

This bill proposes :

(1) That such of these freedmen as consent thereto shall be removed from the Chickasaw Nation to lands ceded to the United States in 1866 by the Creeks and Seminoles, now known as the Oklahoma country.

(2) That two officers, one to be designated by the Interior Department and the other appointed by the Chickasaw authorities, shall ascertain what freedmen will consent to such removal and shall appraise the improvements made by these freedmen in the Chickasaw Nation which the removal will cause them to relinquish.

(3) That the freedmen shall not be required to remove until they shall have disposed of their improvements; but in case the Chickasaw Nation shall pay any freedman the appraised value of his improvements, said freedman, with his family, shall remove from the nation within sixty days from such payment.

(4) That after a freedman shall have disposed of or been paid for his improvements he shall receive $100 for himself and each member of his

family, this being the amount which the treaty of 1866 provided should be paid per capita to freedmen to defray the expense of their removal from the Chickasaw Nation.

(5) That all freedmen who do not elect to remove permanently from the nation "shall be placed upon the same footing as other citizens of the United States, resident in said nation, and shall be subject to removal therefrom for similar causes."

(6) That to such freedmen as shall remove allotments in severalty in Oklahoma shall be made in accordance with the provisions of the general allotment act.

(7) That $77,375 shall be appropriated toward paying the $100 per capita to freedmen who remove.

In submitting the bill Commissioner Atkins said:

I have inserted in the proposed bill an appropriation of $77,375, of which the sum of $55,000 is required to be refunded by the Chickasaws, the whole amount being the sum appropriated by the third article of the treaty of 1866, to be held in trust for the benefit of the freedmen in case the Indians refused to adopt them.

The number of freedmen in the Chickasaw Nation is estimated at from 3,000 to 4,000, but undoubtedly a large number of those resident with the Chickasaws are Choctaw freedmen, and citizens of that nation. It is not probable that the above amount will be sufficient to remove all the Chickasaw freedmen from that nation, but it will be enough for the present, and to test the practicability of this effort for their relief.

The legislation proposed is understood to be acceptable both to the Chickasaws and the freedmen, although the latter would doubtless prefer to remain, if they could be accorded the rights of citizenship and school facilities.

The condition of these people is unfortunate in the extreme, and justice both to them and to the Chickasaws demands early action by Congress.

CHICKASAW ELECTION TROUBLES.

On August 8, 1888, a general election was held in the Chickasaw Nation, Indian Territory, for the purpose of choosing a governor and other national and county officers of that nation, as provided by the constitution and laws thereof. For the office of governor there were, as appears, two candidates, William M. Guy, the then incumbent, and William L. Byrd, who represented an opposing faction of the Chickasaw people.

It seems that at this election Guy received a small majority of the votes cast, but when the same were transmitted to the speaker of the house of representatives of the Chickasaw legislature, whose duty it is under the constitution of that nation to canvass the votes for governor and to declare the election in the presence of both houses of the legislature, the said legislature threw out certain votes, thus giving to Byrd an apparent majority.

Thereupon Guy's friends claimed that the action of the legislature in "counting Byrd in" was unconstitutional, and a very bitter contest was begun.