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Show 40 REPORT OF THE COBIMIS~IONER OF INDIBN AFFAIR$. courts of the State of Washington that allotted lands are not Indian country and that it is no violation of the law to take intoxicating liquors thereon. This is only one of the many instances which could be cited to show the great' necessity of having this question past upon by the Supreme Court of the United States, an object for which the Office has been laboring thr'uout the last year. A very complicated case also has arisen on the former Nez Perc6 Reservation in Idaho. On May 1, 1893, commissioners appointed bv the President pursuant to the act of February 8, 1887 (24 Stat. L., 388), made an agreement mith the Nez PercE tribe for the cession to the United States of all the unallotted lands within the limits of their reservation except certain described tracts. The agreement was ratified by Congress on August 15, 1894 (28 Stat. L., 326). Article 9 of the agreement provides: It is further agreed that the lands by this agreement ceded, those retained, and those allotted to the said Nez Perce Indians shall be subject for a period bf twenty-fi~ey ears to all the laws of the United States prohibiting the intro-duction of intoxicants into the Indian country, and that the Nez Perce Indian allottees, whether under the care of an Indian agent or not, shall, for a like period, be suhject to all the laws of the United States prollihiting the sale or other disposition of intoxicants to Indians. The validity of this article, as far at least as it related to the land ceded, was called in question in the case of George Dick, a Umatilla Indian, who was indicted at the May term, 1905, of the United States district court for the district of ,Idaho for introducing liquor in the Indian country, to wit, into the Nez Perc6 Indian Reservation, in the county of Nez Perce. A demurrer was filed to the indictment, the grounds of which were that there was no Indian country in the county of Nez Perce and within the jurisdiction of the court, and that no offense against the laws of the United States or within the jurisdiction of the district court was charged. At the trial evidence was introduced to the effect that the offense was committed at the village of Cul de Sac, which is on the lands ceded by the Nez Per& to the United States, and that prior to the alleged offehse this, land .had past under the town-site laws to the probate judge of Nez Perce County in trust for the inhabitants of the village. Dick was convicted and ini-prisoned in the State penitentiary. He then applied to the circuit court of appeals for the ninth circuit for a writ of habeas- corpus directed to the warden of the penitentiary, and also for a writ of cer-tiorari to the district court to bring up the records and proceedings in the case. The circuit court of appeals issued a writ of certiorari as prayed, and after consideration of the case held that the district court had no jurisdiction of the offense charged and directed the dis-charge of the prisoner. On a writ of certiorari, applied for by the |