Source: https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/229/498/
Timestamp: 2019-04-23 02:16:41+00:00

Document:
When Congress passed the Act of January 14, 1889, adjusting relations with the Mille Lac Chippewas, a real controversy was subsisting which was thereby adjusted and composed, and the act is to be construed according to its plain and unambiguous terms.
Indians, no less than the United States, are bound by the plain import of the language of an act of Congress and an agreement conferring substantial benefits on them.
Under the Act of January 4, 1889, the Mille Lac Chippewas received substantial benefits, in consideration whereof they released their claims to lands in the Red Lake Reservation upon which there were valid preemption and homestead entries, and the United States is not bound to account to them for the proceeds of sale of such lands; but, as to the other lands, the United States held them in trust for the Mille Lac Chippewas, who are entitled to damages under the act on the basis of the value of such lands in 1889.
In interpreting a proviso in a statute, it will not be given a meaning that would amount to entirely rejecting it.
In a contract with Indians, such as that embodied in the Act of January 14, 1889, a reference to regular and valid preemption and homestead entries of land within a reservation would include all that were not fraudulent, and would not exclude all entries on the ground of invalidity because made on lands within an Indian reservation.
The facts, which involve the construction and interpretation of the various treaties, agreements, and statutes relating to the Mille Lac Reservation, are stated in the opinion.
"to hear and determine a suit or suits to be brought by and on behalf of the Mille Lac Band of Chippewa Indians in the State of Minnesota against the United States, on account of losses sustained by them or the Chippewas of Minnesota by reason of the opening of the Mille Lac Reservation . . . to public settlement under the general land laws of the United States."
The lands to which the act and the suit relate are four fractional townships bordering on the Mille Lac in Minnesota, and three islands in that lake, comprising in all a little more than 61,000 acres. The suit was begun in the name of the Mille Lac Band, and the Court of Claims, two judges dissenting, gave judgment against the United States in the sum of $827,580.72, with a direction, in substance, that the amount recovered be credited to the Chippewas of Minnesota and distributed among them under the provisions of § 7 of the Act of January 14, 1889, 25 Stat. 642, c. 24, 47 Ct.Clms. 415. The case is here upon the appeal of the United States.
that act, they were opened to settlement and disposal under the general land laws of the United States and were disposed of thereunder, to the great loss and damage of the Mille Lac Band or the Chippewas of Minnesota.
The arguments at the bar and the briefs are addressed to these questions: 1. The scope of the jurisdictional act; 2. the rights of the Indians in the lands under the treaties of 1863 and 1864; 3. the effect to be given to the Act of 1889 and its acceptance by the Indians; 4. whether the disposal of the lands, or any of them, under the general land laws, was violative of the rights of the Indians.
The jurisdictional act makes no admission of liability, or of any ground of liability, on the part of the government, but merely provides a forum for the adjudication of the claim according to applicable legal principles. Nor does it contemplate that recovery may be founded upon any merely moral obligation, not expressed in pertinent treaties or statutes, or upon any interpretation of either that fails to give effect to their plain import, because of any supposed injustice to the Indians. United States v. Old Settlers, 148 U. S. 427, 148 U. S. 469; United States v. Choctaw Nation, 179 U. S. 494, 179 U. S. 535; Sac and Fox Indians, 220 U. S. 481, 220 U. S. 489.
"It shall not be obligatory upon the Indians, parties to this treaty, to remove from their present reservations until the United States shall have first complied with the stipulations of Articles IV and VI of this treaty, when the United States shall furnish them with all necessary transportation and subsistence to their new homes, and subsistence for six months thereafter: Provided, That, owing to the heretofore good conduct of the Mille Lac Indians, they shall not be compelled to remove so long as they shall not in any way interfere with or in any manner molest the persons or property of the whites."
The Treaty of 1864, supra, superseded that of 1863, and insofar as their provisions are material here, they were identical, so we shall speak only of the later one. In addition to the creation of the single large reservation, provision was made for the payment of large annuities to the Indians in consideration for the cession of the six original reservations, and it is not questioned that these annuities were duly paid to all the bands, including the Mille Lacs, nor that there was a full compliance with Articles IV and VI.
A treaty negotiated in 1867, 16 Stat. 719, eliminated a considerable portion of the large tract reserved by Article II of the Treaty of 1864 and substituted a new tract, consisting of thirty-six townships, which came to be known as the White Earth Reservation. This treaty is not important here, save as it explains subsequent references to the White Earth Reservation.
"that, owing to the heretofore good conduct of the Mille Lac Indians, they shall not be compelled to remove [from the old reservation to the new one] so long as they shall not in any way interfere with or in any manner molest the persons or property of the whites."
investigation upon charges that they were fraudulent. After the passage of the Act of 1884, all further action was suspended awaiting further legislation.
"[t]hat nothing in this act shall be held to authorize the sale or other disposal under its provisions of any tract upon which there is a subsisting, valid preemption or homestead entry, but any such entry shall be proceeded with under the regulations and decisions in force at the date of its allowance, and. if found regular and valid, patents shall issue thereon."
thereof, . . . and we do also hereby forever relinquish to the United States the right of occupancy on the Mille Lac Reservation, reserved to us by the twelfth article of the Treaty of May 7, 1864."
"The rights of the Indians upon this reservation have been a vexed question, full of difficulties and embarrassments, but it is hoped that this agreement will furnish a basis for its early and final solution."
"Being satisfied from an examination of the papers submitted that the cession and relinquishment by said Chippewa Indians of their title and interest in the lands specified and described in the agreement with the different bands or tribes of Chippewa Indians in the State of Minnesota was obtained in the manner prescribed in the first section of said act, and that more than the requisite number have signed said agreement, I have, as provided by said act, approved the said instruments in writing constituting the agreement entered into by the commissioners with said Indians."
thereafter, and before the Mille Lacs removed from the old reservation, Congress passed the Act of July 22, 1890, 26 Stat 290, c. 714, whereby a railroad right of way, including station grounds, was granted through that reservation upon condition that compensation therefor be paid to the United States for the use of the Indians, and that a failure to use the right of way and station grounds for railroad purposes should inure to the benefit of the Indians, thereby recognizing that the Indians had then come to have an interest in the disposal of the lands.
After the Mille Lacs gave their assent to the Act of 1889 the entries theretofore allowed were examined and passed upon by the Land Department in regular course, and such as were found to be regular and bona fide were passed to patent. The remaining lands in the reservation were subsequently disposed of, not under the Act of 1889, but under the general land laws, in pursuance of directions contained in the joint resolutions of December 19, 1893, 28 Stat. 576, and May 27, 1898, 30 Stat. 745.
purpose to extend the negotiations to the Mille Lac Reservation. The commission, the Secretary of the Interior, and the President, in seeking, obtaining, and approving the relinquishment of that reservation, all treated it as within the purview of the act, and the Mille Lacs did the same. Then too, Congress recognized by the Act of 1890, shortly following the approval of the agreement, that the Indians had come to have an interest in the disposal of the lands in that reservation.
"that nothing in this act shall be held to authorize the sale or other disposal under its provision of any tract upon which there is a subsisting, valid preemption or homestead entry, but any such entry shall be proceeded with under the regulations and decisions in force at the time of its allowance, and if found regular and valid, patents shall issue thereon."
In other words, the controversy was intended to be and was adjusted and composed by concessions on both sides, whereby the lands in the Mille Lac Reservation were put in the same category, and were to be disposed of for the benefit of the Indians in the same manner, as the lands in the other reservations relinquished under the act, but subject to the condition and qualification that all subsisting bona fide preemption and homestead entries should be carried to completion and patent under the regulations and decisions in force at the time of their allowance.
ratify the said act, and each and all of the provisions thereof," and that the Indians, no less than the United States, are bound by the plain import of the language of the act and the agreement. Not only so, but the act conferred upon the Mille Lacs many very substantial advantages which doubtless constituted the inducement to the adjustment and composition to which they assented. Among other advantages, it enabled them to share in the proceeds of the disposal of a vast acreage of lands in which they otherwise would have had no interest.
On behalf of the Indians it also is said that the proviso was limited to "regular and valid" preemption and homestead entries, and that no entry of lands within an Indian reservation could come within that limitation. But this assumes the existence of the Mille Lac Reservation at the time of the entries, which was the very matter in dispute. Besides, the interpretation suggested could not be accepted without wholly rejecting the proviso, for if it was inapplicable to entries in the Mille Lac tract, it was equally inapplicable to any in the other tracts relinquished under the act. In saying this, we do not indicate that there were other entries, for the reports of the Land and Indian Offices, which were before Congress when the Act of 1889 was passed, disclosed the entries in the Mille Lac tract and did not show any others. Of course, the proviso cannot be rejected. It had an office to perform, and must be given effect. It meant, as its terms plainly show, that entries made in accordance with existing regulations and decisions could, if bona fide, be carried to completion and patent in the usual way, and the phrase "if found regular and valid" was evidently used with special reference to the charge that some of the entries were fraudulent, and with the purpose of eliminating such as were of that character.
authorized the completion, and the issuing of patents on, all existing preemption and homestead entries in the Mille Lac tract which, in the course of proceedings in the Land Department, should be found to be within the terms of the proviso to § 6, and therefore that no rights of the Indians were infringed in so disposing of lands embraced in such entries. And we think the evident purpose of the proviso requires that it be held to include entries of that class theretofore passed to patent, of which there were some instances during the early period of the controversy.
"The cession was not to the United States absolutely, but in trust. It was a cession of all of the unallotted lands. The trust was to be executed by the sale of the ceded lands and a deposit of the proceeds in the Treasury of the United States, to the credit of the Indians, such sum to draw interest at five percent."
unlike the legislation sustained in Cherokee Nation v. Hitchcock, 187 U. S. 294, 187 U. S. 307, and Lone Wolf v. Hitchcock, 187 U. S. 553, 187 U. S. 564, 187 U. S. 568, were not adopted in the exercise of the administrative power of Congress over the property and affairs of dependent Indian wards, but were intended to assert, and did assert, an unqualified power of disposal over the lands as the absolute property of the government. Doubtless this was because there was a misapprehension of the true relation of the government to the lands, but that does not alter the result.
The Court of Claims gave no effect to the proviso to § 6, and the findings afford no basis for separating the damages rightly recoverable from those erroneously assessed on account of lands disposed of under preemption and homestead entries allowed prior to the Act of 1889. The case must therefore be remanded for a reassessment of the damages.
By reason of a contention advanced in the briefs, it is well to observe that the damages should be assessed on the basis of the prices which would have been controlling had the Act of 1889 been rightly applied.
The judgment is reversed, and the case is remanded for further proceedings in conformity with this opinion.
MR. JUSTICE McKENNA and MR. JUSTICE DAY dissent.

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