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Show REPORT OR THS COMMISSIONER OF IITDIAN, AFFAIRS. 73 . . an interview with them, explainedthe impracticability of their plan, and dispelled some other objections which clung in their minds, and they then indicated their willingness to accept their allotments. So, on March 9,1906, Allotting Agent Gunderson was instructed to allot them. ' It afterwards appeared, however, that not all the recalcitrant party had been satisfied; for Xfr. Guuderson finally felt compelled to report that further effort was not justified, and on May 18 he again closed the field work at Cheyenne River, leaving 70 Indians still unallotted. The Black Tomahawk case.-The annual report of this O&e for 1.899, page 49, gives an account of the contest between Black Toma-hawk and Mrs. Jane Waldron for the possession of a. tract of land which was selected as an allotment by Blaclr Tomahawlr and, after much controversy, patented to him on March 28, 1899. The land, however, mas occupied by Mrs. Waldron, who instituted an action in the circuit court, of Hughes County, S. Dak., "to have her ulti-mat, rights in and to the land in controversy between her and Black Tomahawk determined, and to, have the patent issued to him inure to her use and benefit." The United States circuit court for the district of South Dakota decided that, under the facts ascertained and the evidence in the record, the complainant was entitled to a decree canceling the trust patent issued to Black Tomahawlr and declaring her entitled to have the lands in controversy allotted to her. On the 12th of last March the Attorney-General decided that no appeal should be taken from this decision, and the case is therefore closed. On June 11? 1906, the United States Indian agent for the-Cheyenne River Agency, on the request of this Office, furnished a certified copy of the decree, from which it appears that the findings of the court were substantially as follows: The complainant is five-sixteenths Sioux Indian, lier father being a white man. The common-law rule that children take the race and nationality of the father does not obtain among the Indians as to the offspring of a white man married to an Indian woman, ahd the custom and law obtaining among Indians have been uniformly recognized by the different bands of Sioux and by the United States.* The complainant joined the Two Kettle band of Smux Indians at the Cheyenne River Agency, S. Dak., and was recognized by that *The court quoted from Davison u. Gihson (66 Fed. ~ e i . 4,4 5). in the elr-cuit court of appeals of the South Dakota circuit, as follows: "It Is common . knowledge, of which the court should take judicial knowledge, that the do-mestic relations of the Indlans of this country have never h- regulated by the common law of England, and that that law is not adapted to the hablts, customs. and manners of the Indians." |
