Opinion ID: 513936
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 4

Heading: The Claim Under the Proclamation of 1783

Text: 108 On September 22, 1783, the Confederal Congress issued a proclamation prohibiting 109 all persons from making settlements on lands inhabited or claimed by Indians, without the limits or jurisdiction of any particular State, and from purchasing or receiving any gift or cession of such lands or claims without the express authority and directions of the United States in Congress assembled.... 110 25 JCC 602 (Sept. 22, 1783) (emphasis added). Both sides agree that the Proclamation of 1783 prohibited purchases, without assent of Congress, of Indian lands outside the borders of the States. Appellants contend that the Proclamation applied, in addition, to land within state borders occupied by unassimilated Indians. They further contend that even if the Proclamation applied only to land beyond state borders, the land purchased by New York in 1785 was not at that time within the fixed limits of New York. The District Court rejected this claim, as do we. 111 The terms of the Proclamation appear to defeat the appellants' claim, though there is a plausible textual argument in their favor. The operative words of the Proclamation appear to prohibit purchases of Indian lands without the limits or jurisdiction of any particular State. Appellants contend, however, that the quoted phrase modifies its immediate antecedent Indians and not lands, which appears five words earlier. There is a rule of construction that qualifying phrases are generally to be applied to words immediately precedent and not to others more remote. United States v. Ven-Fuel, Inc., 758 F.2d 741, 751 (1st Cir.1985). For several reasons, however, it is clear that the phrase modifies the word lands. 112 First, the Proclamation recites that it is adopted pursuant to the authority of Article IX(4); the Legislative Rights Proviso is quoted in full. Since Congress did not have the power to prohibit all purchases of Indian land within state borders, it should not be understood to have attempted to do so in the Proclamation. 113 Second, the preliminary draft of the Proclamation placed the phrase within the United States and without the boundaries of any particular State immediately adjacent to the word lands, 24 JCC 505-06 (Aug. 13, 1783), and there is no indication that the rearrangement of wording was intended to effect any substantive change, much less the significant change urged by the appellants. 114 Third, contemporaneous correspondence of the delegates indicates that they understood the Proclamation to apply only to lands outside the borders of a state. See, e.g., Letter of the Virginia Delegates to Governor Benjamin Harrison (Oct. 4, 1783), reprinted in 7 The Papers of James Madison 367 (Rutland et al. eds. 1962). There can be no doubt that an effort to issue a proclamation barring state purchases of Indian lands within state borders would have set off a storm of protest within the Confederal Congress. As it happened, the Proclamation was a relatively non-controversial matter. 115 As a final argument, the appellants contend that even if the Proclamation applied only to land within state borders, New York's 1785 purchase violated the Proclamation because the acquired lands were not at that time within the borders of New York. But, as the District Court concluded, based on abundant contemporaneous documentation and maps, New York's cession of its claimed Western lands fixing New York's Western boundary was complete in 1782, and the lands purchased in 1785 were well to the east of that Western boundary. See Massachusetts v. New York, 271 U.S. 65, 81, 46 S.Ct. 357, 358, 70 L.Ed. 838 (1926). The fact that Massachusett's lingering dispute with New York concerning the boundary was not resolved (in New York's favor) until the Treaty of Hartford on December 11, 1786, does not detract from the conclusion that the purchased land was within New York's borders in 1785.