Case ID: us-ct-cl_39/html/0546-01.html
Source: Caselaw Access Project
Author: {"author": "Mr. Justice McKenna", "license": "Public Domain", "url": "https://static.case.law/"}
Date Created: 2024-08-24T03:29:51.129683

THE UNITED STATES v. THE CHOCTAW NATION AND THE CHICKASAW NATION. THE CHICKASAW FREEDMEN v. THE CHOCTAW NATION AND THE CHICKASAW NATION.
    [38 C. Cls. R., 558; 193 U. S. R., 115.]
    
      On the cross Appeals of the parties.
    
    A bill in equity is filed by the United States requiring the defendants to come in and interplead concerning certain lands and funds in the possession of the complainants in which the Chickasaw freedmen claim an interest denied by the Choctaw and Chickasaw nations. They appear and interplead.
    The court below decides:
    1. By virtue of the thirteenth amendment to the Constitution of the United States, slaves within the Chickasaw Nation became free.
    2. The Chickasaw freedmen did not, by virtue of their emancipation, become members of the nation or entitled to share in the property held in common by members of the nation.
    3. Where the Chickasaw Nation, on the 10th January, 1873, consented by statute that the freedmen be adopted as Chickasaw citizens, the statute, however, not to take effect until its approval by the United States, and on the 22d October, 1885, passed an act whereby it repealed the former act, and “refused to accept or adopt the freedmen as citizens upon any terms or conditions whatever,” a subsequent approval by Congress, August 15,1894, of the repealed act of 1873, is not obligatory upon the Chickasaw Nation.
    4. The rights of the Chickasaw Nation and the Chickasaw freedmen under the treaty with the United States of July 10, 1866, Article III, remain unaffected by subsequent legislation, either of the nation or of Congress, and must be determined by the treaty. The laws, treaties, and agreements of the parties reviewed.
    5. The Chickasaw freedmen having voluntarily remained in the Chickasaw country, their status is defined by the treaty of 1866, and their relation to the nation is the same as that of citizens of the United States residing there; and they have no right or interest, independently of the agreement of March 21, 1902, referred to in the Act 1st July, 1902 (32 Stat. L., 642), in any property held in common by members of the nation, or in the funds of the nation now in the hands of the United States.
   The decision of the court below is affirmed on the same grounds.

Mr. Justice McKenna

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