Case ID: us-ct-cl_39/html/0547-01.html
Source: Caselaw Access Project
Author: {"author": "Mr. Justice Day", "license": "Public Domain", "url": "https://static.case.law/"}
Date Created: 2024-08-24T03:29:51.129683

THE DELAWARE INDIANS v. THE CHEROKEE NATION.
    [38 C. Cls. R., 234; 193 U. S. R., 127.]
    
      On the claimants’ Appeal.
    
    The suit is brought under the Acl 28th June, 1898 ( 30 Stat. L., 490), to determine the rights of. the Delawares in the lands and funds of the nation under the agreement of April 8,1867. The agreement, with the treaties bearing upon the questions now involved, and a statement of the transactions between the parties will be found in 28 O. 01s. R., 281.
    The court below decides:
    1. The law of real property is to be found in the law of the situs; and, where it is in the Cherokee country, in the constitution and laws of the Cherokee Nation.
    2. After the agreement between the parties of April 8, 1867, there were Oherokees by blood and Oherokees by adoption, both having a right of occupancy regulated by the constitution and laws of the nation. The only difference was immaterial — that the Oherokees bought their right from the United States and the Delawares theirs from the Cherokee Nation.
    3. Notwithstanding the agreement between the parties admitting the Delawares to citizenship and a right to share in the lands and funds of the Oherokees, the Cherokee Nation has the right under the Cherokee constitution to admit persons not Oherokees to citizenship and to share in the lands and funds of the nation, though the individual shares of the Delawares, as of all other Cherokee citizens, be thereby diminished.
    4. The constitution óf the Cherokee Nation having been adopted in 1866, and the Delawares having entered the nation as citizens after its adoption, they are estopped from questioning its provisions.
    5. The Cherokee Nation, being clothed with the characteristics of a distinct political community, has the right and power to admit aliens to citizenship; and persons so admitted will possess in common with other citizens an equality in the property and funds of the body politic.
    6. The court is without authority under the jurisdictional Ací 28th June, 1898 ( 30 Stat. L., 490), to investigate an alleged improper and fraudulent use of a national fund by the Cherokee government.
    7. The court is also without jurisdiction to pass upon the rights of full-blooded Oherokees appearing in this suit by an intervening petition.
    
      8. This not being a controversy between the United States and “an unlettered people,” parol evidence is not admissible to show what individual Delawares understood and believed when the agreement of April 8, 1867, was entered into.
   The decision of the court below is affirmed on the same grounds.

Mr. Justice Day

delivered the opinion of the Supreme Court, February 23, 1904.