Case ID: us-ct-cl_31/html/0453-01.html
Source: Caselaw Access Project
Author: {"author": "Mr. Justice Brewer", "license": "Public Domain", "url": "https://static.case.law/"}
Date Created: 2024-08-24T03:29:51.129683

SAMUEL MARKS ET AL. v. THE UNITED STATES AND THE BANNOCK AND PIUTE INDIANS.
    (28 C. Cls. R., 147; 161 U. S. R., 297.)
    The cause of action is a claim for property taken by Indians in Happy Valley, Malheur County, Oreg., during the Bannock war in 1878. The legal questions involved relate to amity, treaty obligations, and jurisdiction.
    The court below decides:
    1. No formal declaration of war by Congress nor proclamation by the President is necessary to define and characterize an Indian war. It is sufficient that hostilities exist and military operations are carried on.
    2. The hostilities with the Bannocks in 1878 constituted an Indian war.
    3. The Indian Depredation Act, 1891, provides that this court shall have jurisdiction of claims for property taken or destroyed “by Indiana belonging to any band, tribe, or nation in amity with the United States Treaty relations are not equivalent, within the meaning of the statute, to amity.
    4. The Act 3d Maroli, 1885 (23 Stat. L., p. 376), provides that the Secretary of the Interior shall report to Congress Indian depredation claims “chargeable against any tribe of Indians by reason of any treaty between such tribes and the United States;" and the Bannock treaty, 3d July, 1868 (15 Stat. L., p. 673), provides that “if bad men among the Indians" shall commit a depredation, the Bannocks “will, om proof made to their agent and notice by him, deliver up the wrong doer;” “and in case they willfully refuse so to do, the person injured shall be reimbursed for his loss from the annuities or other moneys due or ta become due to them." A claim for property taken or destroyed during the general hostilities of the Bannock war does not como within these provisions.
    5. Where amity did not exist; and no treaty made a tribe responsible for property taken or destroyed, the court is without jurisdiction of a suit brought under the Indian Depredation Act, 1891.
    The decision of the court below is affirmed on the same grounds.
    March 2, 1896.
   Mr. Justice Brewer

delivered the opinion of the Supreme Court