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Show COMMISSIONER INDIAN APFAIRS. 69 There was performed during the year 1,957 days' voluntary over-time service by clerks of the Indian Bureau in order to keep the work of the office practically current. This does not include the many days of overtime work by the officials of the bureau. The archives of the Indian Office are very valuable, embracing as they do the history of the difficult question of the management of the Indian race as discussed by our greatest statesmen. They consist of records, reports of important councils leading to treaties, litiga-tion, legislation, decisions, and correspondence of great importance pertaining to Indian matters from the congressional legislation of 1785. COURT DECISIONS. There have been a large number of decisions by the courts on Indian matters during the past year. A short synopsis of the prin-cipal points decided in the leading cases follows: United States v. Eelipe Fandoval (231 U. S., 28) : This was a crim-inal prosecution for introducing intoxicating liquor into the Indian country, to wit, the Santa Clara pueblo in the State of New Mexico. The Supreme Court of the United States reversed the district court, and held : 1. The status of the Pueblo Indians in New hlexico on their lands is such that Congress can prohibit the introduction of intoxicating liquors into such lands notwithstanding the admission of New Mexico to statehood. 2. It was a legitimate exercise of power on the part of Congress to provide in the Xew Meixco enabling act against the introduction of liquor into the In-dian country and the prohibition to lands of the Pueblo Indians. Perrin v. United States (232 U. S., 478) : This case came before the Supreme Court on a writ of error to the district court of the United States for the district of South Dakota, to review a conviction for un-lawfully selling intoxicating liquors upon lands ceded by the Yanl-ton Indians by the act of August 15,1894 (28 Stat. L., 286). In the seventeenth section of the agreement with the Yankton Indians, rati-fied and confirmed by Congress on the above mentioned date, it was stipulated that no intoxicating liquors nor other intoxicants shonld ever be sold or given away upon any of the lands ceded, nor upon the lands comprising the Yankton Reservation as described in the treaty between said Indians and the United States, dated April 19, 1858, and as afterwards surveyed and set off to said Indians. The court held : 1. That the Government has the power to protect the Indian wards against the ems of intemperance, and Congress can prohibit the snle of Intoxicants upon ceded lands If it is reasonably essenHal to the protection of the Indians resfding on the unceded lands. 2. That the failure expressly to limit the duration of the prohibition against the enle of intoxicattug liquors will not invalidate such prohibition so long as the period dllring which the United States holds the allotted lands in trust has not expired, the tribal relations not dissolved, and the wardahin not terminated. |