OCR Text |
Show REPORT OF THE CONMISSIONER OF INDIAN AFFAIRS. 73 This was the old hanting gronnd.of the Utes before they were removed from Colorado and they have always depended on game for no small part of their food and clothing. They can not understand why they sl~onld be shut out from it during certain seasons of the year by State laws, especially when the right to hunt game in this region was guaranteed to them by a treaty with the Government, which provided that such right should he inviolable and continue so long as game existed there. However, the United States Supreme Court bas held, in Ward u. Race Horse (163 U. S., 504), that the admission of a State into tbe Union annuls such treaty rights. Therefore the Utes conld legally be held by the officials of the State of Colorado to be violating the game laws. The testimony shows that the Indians were aware that their hnnting was liable to be objected to, and that they bad been for some time rather apprehensively on the lookout for the c'bnckskin police," and had made inquiries as to what they would be likely to do to them. SOUTHERN UTES, COLORADO. Xo change in the affairs of the Southern Utes has taken place since my last report. The patents for allotments have not been issued, nor have the surplus lands been opened to settlement. The work of making irrigating ditches for the allotted tracts is rapidly approaching completion and will, it is thought, be finished this 8ea8OIl. A work of considerable magnitude and importance will be the irriga tion of the diminished reservation which is to be occupied by the por-tion of the tribe that refused to take allotments. The Indian appro-priation act of June 7,1897 (30 Stats., 62), authorized conference with the Monteznma Valley Canal Company, or other parties, for the pur-pose of securing a supply of water for this reserve. United States Indian Inspector Wright, having looked into the matter under Depart-ment instructions, submitted a report dated November 4,1897, inclosing a proposition from the Mo~rtezuma Valley Canal Oompany to furnish the needed snpply. The inspeetor's report and accompanying proposi-tion were submitted to Congress by Department letter of February 7, 1898 (see Senate Doc. 124, Fifty-Bfth Congress, second session). Under the provisions of an item in the Indian appropriation act for the current year, the Department is authorized to make investigation as to the practicability of providing a water snpply for irrigation purposes on the diminished reserve, and this investigation is now being made, I am informally advised, through the agency of the Geological Survey SEMINOLES Ih- FLORIDA. The Department approved, April 16,1898, the deed from Frank Q. Brown for a tract in southern Florida, described as section 32, town-ship 47 south, range 33 east, which was purchased for the Seminoles, and was referred to in the last annual report as requiring further papera |