JUSTICES WHITE and MCKENNA, dissenting. due died without heirs who could inherit, there is no reason why this share should not escheat. It is perfectly evident that a mere enumeration of the Indians, and an equal division among them, does not fulfill the requirements of the situation." The deduction which the government makes from the admission just quoted being that the petitioners are not entitled to relief, because relief cannot be administered without making parties defendant all those to whom the distribution was made and securing an entire readjustment and settlement of the rights of all parties. This court now affirms the judgment of the court below. In effect the application of the rule of laches made by the lower court is approved, and the decisive result of the laches is additionally sustained by the conclusion that, although it was not shown that any notice was served upon the petitioners prior to the distribution made by the Secretary of the Interior, the presumption that the officers of the government discharged their duty raises the legal inference that before making the payment such full and fair investigation had been made by the executive officers as warranted the paying out of the money in the manner in which it was disbursed. This court now, moreover, holds that as the judgment in the consolidated case, although it only found the amount due to the Pottawatomie Indians in Michigan and Indiana as a body, had remitted the question of what Indians were entitled to such gross sum to the proper executive department of the government, the executive officers who made the distribution in effect acted under the order of the court. The jurisdiction to entertain the action can alone be predicated upon the following considerations: First, the act of Congress of 1890, by the authority of which the original judgment in the consolidated case was rendered, or upon the judgment thus rendered; or, second, the appropriation made by Congress to pay such judgment and the acts of Congress in connection therewith. By section 1066 of the Revised Statutes it is provided that the jurisdiction of the Court of Claims "shall not extend to any claim against the government growing out of or dependent on any treaty stipulation entered into with JUSTICES WHITE and MCKENNA, dissenting. the Indian tribes." Clearly, therefore, aside from the jurisdiction conferred by the act of 1890, there was no power in the courts to consider and determine the question of the proper distribution of the funds due the Pottawatomie Nation of Indians, or to fix the just proportion to which the Pottawatomie Indians of Michigan and Indiana were entitled. Now, the act of 1890, which conferred jurisdiction on the Court of Claims to determine the sum due the Pottawatomie Indians of Michigan and Indiana out of the tribal funds, was susceptible of being construed in one of two ways: First, that it alone delegated the power to determine the aggregate amount of the just proportion of the tribal funds due to the Indians in question, or that it conferred such authority, and, in addition, imposed the duty of ascertaining the particular Indians who were entitled to share in the distribution when the total sum for distribution was judicially determined. That the statute embraced only the first power, that is, of fixing the aggregate amount, seems to me to conclusively result from the judgment rendered by the Court of Claims and affirmed by this court. It cannot be doubted that the Court of Claims expressly decided that the authority conferred by the act of 1890 related only to determining the aggregate amount, and not to the ascertainment of the particu lar persons entitled to share in the same and the amount they were respectively entitled to take. True, this court, in its opinion, in 148 U. S. 691, referred to the absence of evidence as to who were entitled to the distributive shares, and the impossibility of rendering a decree on that subject, yet it nevertheless, in affirming the judgment, expressly approved the conclusion of the Court of Claims limiting the judgment to the determination of the aggregate amount and leaving the distribution of that sum, when Congress should thereafter appropriate therefor, to the action of the executive officers of the government. It follows that the jurisdictional power conferred by the act of 1890 was exhausted by the decree of affirmance, and the subsequent distribution of the gross sum when the appropriation had been made was solely a matter within the jurisdiction of Congress and the administrative officers of the government. JUSTICES WHITE and MCKENNA, dissenting. That such was the legislative conception of the effect of the judgment of affirmance rendered by this court, is conclusively shown by the appropriation to pay the money and the other legislative acts concerning that sum and other sums awarded to the Indians in question, since such acts treat of the ascertainment of the individuals entitled to the gross amount found due as a purely administrative question, with no intimation whatever that it was conceived that the administrative discretion which the acts imposed was subject to be reviewed and controlled by the judicial branch of the government. To repeat, the jurisdiction, under the act of 1890 having been exhausted and the judgment fixing the aggregate sum having expressly remitted the distribution to the administrative branch of the government, it follows that no support for the jurisdiction over the present suit, either in the Court of Claims or in this court, can be founded upon the act of 1890 or the judgment rendered thereunder. Did, then, jurisdiction arise from the act of Congress appropriating the sum necessary to pay the judgment referred to or from the other appropriation acts to which reference has heretofore been made? From what has already been stated, it would seem that a negative answer must be given to this question. In view of the terms of section 1066 of the Revised Statutes, I think it is clearly requisite that the intention of Congress to commit to the courts the ultimate regulation and control of a distribution prima facie intended to be made or expressly directed to be made among unascertained beneficiaries by the executive officers of the government, should be plainly made to appear before it should be held that such authority was conferred on the judiciary. Now there had been no claims presented to Congress on behalf of Pottawatomie Indians seeking individual relief; but the claims urged were on behalf of the whole body of Pottawatomie Indians in Michigan and Indiana, who asserted the non-payment of their just proportion of the tribal annuities. On twenty-four different occasions, during as many years, Congress, through the Interior Department, had ascertained and determined who were the individuals constituting the Pottawatomie Indians of Michigan aud Indiana, entitled to a just JUSTICES WHITE and MCKENNA, dissenting. proportion of tribal annuities, and neither in the jurisdictional act of 1890 nor in any of the appropriating acts was language used importing that it was deemed that a necessity existed for a judicial ascertainment of the particular individuals who might possess a right to share in the "just proportion" referred to. The various acts in which the appropriations in question were embodied made provision for numerous other appropriations, in compliance with stipulations embodied in treaties made with sundry Indian tribes, and as in the particular appropriating paragraphs in question payments were merely directed to be made to unascertained individuals constituting a body of Indians, there was certainly no clearly implied or expressed intention that the payments should be subject to the ultimate control of the courts or that the disbursement of the funds should be under any other direction or control than that of the Secretary of the Interior, who had made prior payments of a similar character upon his own ascertainment of the individual beneficiaries. As a matter of fact, also, a contrary intent is clearly manifested in several of the appropriating paragraphs. Thus, in the act of March 2, 1895, 28 Stat. 894, the duty is expressly imposed on the Secretary of the Interior to take a census of the Indians who were entitled to the fund appropriated by the previous Congress to pay the judgment of $104,626, thus implying that there had not been any provision in the judgment of the Court of Claims or of this court for the ascertainment of such individual beneficiaries; and one thousand dollars was appropriated "for the purpose of making the payment," obviously to those who, by a proper performance of the duty imposed on the Secretary of the Interior, should be found to be embraced within the class. So, also, in the same act, 28 Stat. 885, the absolute control which Congress deemed it was exercising for the distribution of the sums found due to the Indians as a body was evinced in the direction to the Commissioner of Indian Affairs "to withhold from distribution among the said Indians so much of any moneys due them by the United States as may be found justly and equitably due for legal services rendered, and to pay the same on account of the prosecution and recovery of the moneys aforesaid." Bearing in mind that the appropriated JUSTICES WHITE and MCKENNA, dissenting. sums in question, though a "just proportion," were in fact tribal funds, and that the expenditure of tribal funds is peculiarly regulated by Congress and committed to the Indian Department, Rev. Stat. sec. 2086, et seq., it seems to me beyond reasonable controversy that Congress intended that the ascertainment of the particular beneficiaries entitled to the funds and the distribution among them should be performed solely by its own agencies. The decision in United States v. Weld, 127 U. S. 51, is not an authority opposed to the views just expressed. In that case a judgment had been rendered by the Court of Commissioners of Alabama Claims, in favor of certain claimants, and they had received a portion of such judgment. The amount of the gross fund due all claimants had been fixed in the statute, what should be deducted had been specifically declared, and it had also been explicitly provided that the balance which would necessarily result should be distributed to the judgment creditors. The holding of this court was simply that creditors, whose claims against the fund had been adjudicated by the commission provided for in the statute, possessed a right to sue in the Court of Claims to recover their share of a portion of the fund which had been improperly retained by the Treasury Department. Being of opinion that the judgment below should be reversed for want of jurisdiction, and that the sole remedy of the petitioners lies in an appeal to the fairness and sense of justice of the legislative branch of the government, it would, of course, be out of place for me to discuss the grounds upon which the laches is held to apply. It is manifest, however, that the reasoning by which I have been led to the conclusion that the court was without jurisdiction, if sound, is in absolute conflict with the theory that laches can be imputed to the petitioners because they did not invoke the aid of the court below to control the discretion to distribute the money vested in the Secretary of the Interior by the acts of Congress making the appropriations. This ground of laches being put out of view, the only other theory upon which it can be rested is, that although the petitioners formally presented their claim to the Secretary of the Interior and called his attention to their rights, |