Opinion ID: 1473543
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 4

Heading: tdm 9-1-1924 [r. 520-521]

Text: And there the record ends, so far as the 1923 schedule is concerned. But the record of the Department's delays, indecision and growing bias against allotments generally, unfortunately does not end at this point. It continues with alarming crescendo until December, 1944, when, as we will fully set out, not only does the Secretary's sound discretion as to Palm Springs allotments dwindle into nothingness, but his personal knowledge of even the existence of such allotments simply does not appear. We continue with the Supreme Court's narrative: The Secretary instructed Wadsworth to prepare a new schedule listing only selections voluntarily made and to leave off those who did not desire allotments. In 1927, the Department received from Wadsworth a new schedule showing voluntary selections for twenty-four members of the Palm Springs Band. Each Indian for whom a selection was listed received from Wadsworth a certificate of selection for allotment. Each was stamped `Not valid unless approved by the Secretary of the Interior.' On October 26, 1923, Wadsworth asked the Indian Department for instructions, reciting, `Allotments being completed and certificates issued. Many allottees anxious to immediately occupy their selections and prepare things for early crops instead waiting for receipt of patents.' On the same day he received reply, `No objection to Indians preparing their respective allotment selections for crops if properly listed on schedule.' Wadsworth also wrote to one, at least, of the allottees in the St. Marie case, saying among other things, `It is difficult to tell exactly when you may expect these patents from Washington but I believe they should be here within 6 weeks or so. They will come to the superintendent in Riverside, who will notify you that they are there and ready for delivery to you. In the meantime, the Commissioner of Indian Affairs in Washington authorizes me to say to you that from this date you are entitled to enter upon and take possession of these allotments, and these certificates will be your evidence of such authority until the trust patents are received by you.' 322 U.S. at pages 423, 424, 64 S.Ct. at page 1092, 88 L.Ed. 1363. Wadsworth made similar promises to other Indians. In a statement before the Committee of Indian Affairs of the United States Senate, Marcus Pete, a full-blood Indian who owned about 56 houses in the Agua Caliente Reservation, of a total value of $48,350, said that he had selected the land for his allotment and for his children's allotments through Mr. Wadsworth, United States special allotting agent. Pete further stated: And he told me that I would be given that ground because I had selected that ground and made improvements upon it. [3] In the court below, Wadsworth himself testified that he informed the allottees after the selections in each schedule had been made that they could occupy the lands and make use of them as long as the allotments were scheduled out [R. 146]; and that the Commissioner of Indian Affairs had authorized him to that effect [R. 142, 162, 164]. He also testified that it had been his experience that his allotments had come back within even less than six weeks  less than a month. [R. 186-187] These were not the rash statements of an irresponsible beginner, but the authorized promises of a veteran of the Indian Service, who at that time had been in the work for twenty or more years. [R.138] Mr. Wadsworth had been praised at a meeting of Indians at Palm Springs by Assistant Commissioner Meritt, [R.150-151 and 521] and of him Inspector Blair had said in his comprehensive report on the conditions in the reservation: The Allotting Agent, Mr. Wadsworth, has honestly, conscientiously and faithfully endeavored to make the allotments on an equitable basis. He has done his best  no one could have done any better. [R. 435] The trial judge, at the conclusion of the venerable octogenarian's testimony, observed: You retired 15 years too soon. [R. 190] Wadsworth's standing and accomplishments in the Indian Service are significant not only in establishing that the allottees did believe and had the right to believe his authorized representations, but also as tending to refute the specious and belated criticism of his 1927 schedule, voiced by Commissioner Collier. That criticism will be discussed fully hereafter. Continuing its narrative regarding the 1927 allotments, the Supreme Court's opinion sets forth: Wadsworth filed the schedule with the Department of the Interior. He attached a certificate, among other things reciting `that the allotments shown herein were made in accordance with the provisions of the act of Congress of February 8, 1887 as amended by the Act of June 25, 1910 and supplemented by the Act of March 2, 1917.' The General Land Office recommended that the schedule be approved, with exceptions that appear to have no bearing on the case before us. But the allotments appear never to have been approved by the Secretary. He refuses to issue patents to which these Indians claim to be entitled. [R.424] On December 14, 1944, seven months after the Supreme Court had handed down the opinion quoted from herein, and more than seventeen years after Wadsworth's schedule of selections for allotment [R. 314] had been received in the Indian Office [R. 317], Oscar L. Chapman, Assistant Secretary of the Interior, in a one-paragraph memorandum, disapproved the 1927 schedule. His disapproval was based upon the reasons noted in a lengthy letter by John Collier, Commissioner of Indian Affairs, which reasons Chapman adopted as his own. [R. 340] Summarized, the Commissioner's reasons for disapproving the 1927 schedule were as follows: (1) It gave allotments to only a minority of the members of the Band; (2) it did not represent a proper exercise of the allotment policy; (3) it did not divide the land into selections of equal value; (4) some portions of the land covered by it were of too great value as a unit to be allotted in severalty; (5) if the 1927 schedule had been approved, a just and equitable division of the tribal assets would be impossible. [R.327-338] In an attempt to explain the unconscionable delay on the part of the Department of the Interior in passing upon the allotment rights of these Indians, the appellant's brief asserts: A contention that there was abuse of discretion cannot be based upon the lapse of time between the submission of the schedule and its formal disapproval. There was no neglect or dilatoriness on the part of the Secretary but very careful consideration of a complex situation. This record shows him for years endeavoring to solve what is admittedly `no ordinary allotment problem', etc. This attempt to justify the Secretary's delay is inconsistent with the Commissioner's own statement of what happened to the schedule after it reached Washington. After reciting in minute detail [R. 325] certain office and administrative matters related to the routing of the ill-starred document, the Commissioner stated his conclusion: For these reasons, I am satisfied that the 1927 schedule never was approved and in fact never was considered by you or any of your predecessors in office. [R.327] How can it be said, then, that the Secretary of the Interior was burning the midnight oil, year after year, over this Palm Springs allotment problem, when he did not even consider the chief datum in that problem  the schedule of selections for allotment prepared by his own experienced and competent agent in the field? Finally, the appellant argues: When, by reason of conditions existing on the Palm Springs Reservation he [the Secretary of the Interior] believed no allotments should be made thereon, he recommended extension of the tribal trust period    and endeavored to get a legislative declaration of what was then thought to be a matter within his discretion. When the Supreme Court construed the 1917 Act as removing from his discretion as to whether allotments should be made at all on the Palm Springs Reservation, he promptly disapproved the schedule. From the foregoing, it is reasonably clear that the 1927 schedule was held up in the Indian Office for two reasons: First, in the hope that legislation, to be referred to in greater detail hereafter, would be enacted by Congress to abolish the system of allotments so far as the Mission Indians were concerned; and second, in the belief that, in any event, the Secretary had discretion as to whether allotments on these reservations should be made at all. When Congress and the Supreme Court both frustrated these hopes of the Commissioner's he promptly  that is, seven months after the Supreme Court's decision  recommended disapproval of the 1927 schedule. In other words, the specious objections to the schedule appear to be mere window dressing, under the cover of which Commissioner Collier could gratify his deep-seated and long-standing aversion to allotments generally. This implacable opposition to allotments is irrefutably established by statements made at Congressional hearings, as well as by the full record in the instant case. In a statement before the Senate Committee on Indian Affairs at a hearing on S. 1424 and S.2589, Commissioner Collier said: The Department maintains that    it is contrary to the public policy to allot. [4] Again, at the same hearing, the Commissioner said: We think that allotment, in most of these Mission lands, would be very unjust, etc. [5] In the court below, Wadsworth testified that Commissioner Collier was opposed to allotments. [R.149] Collier's opposition seemed to have commenced early  in the 1920's, when he was secretary of the Indian Defense League or Association, as it is variously called in the record. Referring to the organizations largely responsible for the numerous protests, now on file with the Department, against the proposed allotments to the Mission Indians [R.421], Inspector Blair, in his report to the Secretary of the Interior under date of April 30, 1924 [R.421], introduced in evidence by the appellant itself, wrote: The Indian Defense League