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Show ! EEPORT OF THE COMMISSIONER OF INDIAN AFFAIRS. LXIX I 1 1 The matter was immediately looked into, aiid as a consequence a new Executive order was issued, with a view to desorihii~g the reservatiou with.greater definiteness. The parties who had made the entries pro-tested, and a subsequent (third) Executive order was procured (order dated March 3,1886), excepting their entries from the operation of the order of Mayl, 1883, which latter action wan, in my opinion, unfortu-nate and ~nischievousi nits results. If permitted to stand, it would de-feat the real object of the original Executive order (March 16, IY77), from the fact that the entries in question cover the Nutrias Spriugv and adjacent lands, perhaps the most valuable to the Indians of any of the reserved lands. The object and intention of the Executive order of Mare11 16, 1877, as we ham seen, was to secure to the Indians the springx and adjacent lands, the use of which they had so long eujoyed, and which seemed absolutely necessary to their existence, and according to the accepted rules of co~~struetiosnai d lands and springs were actually reserved by said order. Courses and distances must give way to natural objects when mentioned in an instrument deeeribing lands and defining houud-aries. Applying this principle, the lioeof the reservatiou as described in said order would include, as it was intended it should, both the Nl~trias and Peseado Springs, and as none of the lands reserved by that orderwere subject to'entry on and after the date of its issuaoce, I , hold that the order of March 3,1885, the object of which was to protect the entries, clothes them with no shadow of validity whatever. The entries were illegal and ought never to have been reeoguized. Xore-over, the highest judicial tribunal of our country has repeatedly held that a party eauuot initiate a pre-emption right under the laws of the United States by intrusion upon lands in the actual possession of another. In the ease of Athertoll u. Fowler (6 Otto, 513), the court s~ys: The generosity by whioh Cougress gave the settler the right of pre-e~rption was not intended to give him the benefit of another mau'a labor, and anthorise him to turn that man sud his family out of their home. It did not propose to give its bounty to settlements obtained by violenoe at the expense of others. The right to ot&e a settlement was to be exerciwd on unsettled lend; to make improvements on uoim-proved land. To erect s, dwelling-house did not meso to seize some obher man's dwelling. I t had reference to vacant land; to onimprovedlsod; and it wonld have shooked the moral seellae of the men who passed theile laws if they had supposed that they had extended an invitation to the pioneer population toaoquire inchoate rights t o the pnblic lands by trespass, by violenoe, by robbery, by wotslaadiug to homicides and other crimes of less moral tnrpitude. EASTERN CHEROKEES. By the authority of the eleventh aection of the act of July 15, l8iO (16 State., p. 362), the Eastern hand of Cherokee Indians institnted a suit in the circuit court of the United States for the wevtern district of North CaJrolina, against William H. Thomas et al., for all claims indud- |
