Case ID: us-ct-cl_42/html/0525-01.html
Source: Caselaw Access Project
Author: {"author": "Mr. Chief Justice Fuller", "license": "Public Domain", "url": "https://static.case.law/"}
Date Created: 2024-08-24T03:29:51.129683

CHEROKEE INTERMARRIAGE CASES. RED BIRD ET AL., CITIZENS OF THE UNITED STATES BY BLOOD, v. THE UNITED STATES. FITE ET AL., INTERMARRIED WHITE PERSONS CLAIMING TO BE ENTITLED TO CITIZENSHIP IN THE CHEROKEE NATION, v. THE UNITED STATES. PERSONS CLAIMING RIGHTS IN THE CHEROKEE NATION BY INTERMARRIAGE v. THE UNITED STATES.
    [40 C. Cls. R., 411; 203 U. S. R., 76.]
    
      On the claimants’ Appeals.
    
    The subject-matter of this suit consists of 4,420,076 acres of land in the Cherokee country about to be allotted in severalty among the Cherokee people. The principal question involved is as to the right of white persons intermarried with Cherokee citizens to share in the allotment, either as Cherokee citizens or as communal owners.
    The court below decides:
    1. Under the decision of the Supreme Court in the case of The Cherokee Nation v. Journeyoake (155 U. S. R., 196, 208) the lands now to be allotted among the Cherokees are not communal property, but constitute the public domain of the nation.
    2. In this public domain all Cherokees by blood and those whites by intermarriage who became citizens prior to the 1st November, 1875, are equally interested and have equal per capita rights in the allotment of those lands.
    
      3. Tiie rights and privileges of those intermarried white citizens whose marriages with persons of Cherokee blood were subsequent to the 1st November, 1876, do not extend to a right of soil or interest in1 the vested funds of the nation, and they are not entitled to share in the allotment of the public domain unless they paid into the National Treasury $500 each.
    1. Those white citizens who, subsequent to marriage with persons of Cherokee blood, have married persons not of Cherokee blood, and those white men who, being husbands of women of Cherokee blood, have abandoned their wives, are not citizens of the Cherokee Nation, and are not entitled to participate in the allotment.
    5. Office found is a proceeding preliminary to the eviction of an alien in possession who would be entitled to hold if he were not an alien. It is nothing more than a form of action. In the cases of the intermarried whites the loss of citizenship is- a matter of defence, and need not be established by office found.
    The decree of the court below is affirmed.
    November 5, 1906.
   Mr. Chief Justice Fuller

delivered the opinion of the Supreme Court