Case ID: us-ct-cl_36/html/0578-02.html
Source: Caselaw Access Project
Author: {"author": "Mr. Justice Brown", "license": "Public Domain", "url": "https://static.case.law/"}
Date Created: 2024-08-24T03:29:51.129683

MILTON C. CONNERS, JR., v. THE UNITED STATES.
    [33 C. Cls. R., 317; 180 U. S. R., 271.]
    
      On the claimcuntfs ApjJeal.
    
    In May, 1877, the Northern Cheyennes number about 1,800. In that month 937 of them are taken to the Indian Territory. Dull Knife’s band, when the removal takes place, is merged with the Northern Cheyennes on the reservation, and is, with all others there, in amity. After a year of sickness and repeated entreaties to be taken back, 320 of them break away and are pursued and overtaken and fired upon. An Indian war ensues. On the 3d of October Dull Knife’s band is captured and taken to Port Robinson, numbering 49 men, 58 women, and 48 children. Little Wolf’s hand separates from the others and disappears. Dull Knife’s band is destroyed in January, 1879, only 7 men surviving.
    
      The court below decides:
    1. Indians on a reservation in 1878 were in a position unknown to the law, being neither citizens nor aliens, free nor slave — prisoners of war when there was no war.
    2. In 1878 Dull Knife’s hand may have had a right to leave a reservation and go peaceably back to their old home; hut under the jurisdictional statute it must be held that after they fought troops of the United States they were not in amity.
    3. Appropriations made by Congress for depredations committed by Dull Knife’s band, with directions that payment be charged to “the Northern Cheyenne and Arapahoe Indians,” are not a legislative recognition binding the Northern Cheyennes. Under •the Indian depredation act of 1891 they may contest a liability for the acts of Dull Knife’s band.
    4. Dull Knife’s and Littie Wolf’s bands must be regarded as Indian entities and proper defendants under the decision in Montoya v. The United States et al. (32 C. Cls. R., 249) and Herring v. Same (ib., 536); and the extermination of Dull Knife’s band by the military authorities on the assumption that they were escaping prisoners of war refutes the supposition of a preexisting condition of amity
    5. It is unfortunate that frontiersmen must suffer without remedy, but it must be held that if -the United States by its citizens, officers, or agents drive a band of Indians into a state of war, the tribe can not be considered liable for the obligations existing in a state of peace; and where the United States engage-in war with a portion of a tribe acting independently of the tribe, and over which it can exercise no control, the tribe in amity can not be held responsible for the acts of the band at war.
   The decision of the court below is affirmed on the same grounds.

Mr. Justice Brown

delivered the opinion of the Supreme Court February 11, 1901.