OCR Text |
Show 370 HISTORY OF PUBLIC LAND LAW DEVELOPMENT With these precedents in mind, a shrewd group of lobbyists, railroad officials, and members of Congress secured the appointment of a commission to treat with the Osages for the sale of their reserve to the L.L. & G. Railroad. By the usual combination of pressures the Osages in 1868 were brought to approve a treaty providing for the sale of their land to the railroad for 20 cents an acre. The treaty raised a storm of protest in the House of Representatives which accused the Indian Office of "grossly and fraudulently" neglecting the interests of the Indians and using "improper influence" to gain their consent. The Governor of Kansas denounced the treaty as an "audacious attempt on the part of the Secretary of the Interior and his confederates to transfer to a railroad company by unheard of methods seven million acres of land for a mere bagatelle in comparison to their real value." So strong was the opposition to the treaty both in Kansas and in Washington, that its sponsors feared to bring it to a vote. Land reformers were disturbed at the unique influence the treaty-making power gave to the Interior Department and the Senate by which they could arrange jointly for the sale of large reservations to land companies and railroads, without the land becoming a part of the public domain and subject to the general land laws. Reformers feared that the continued use of the treaty-making power to sell whole reservations threatened the very foundation of the public land system since it made possible the direct transfer of reservations to influential groups or companies and denied to the squatters on the tracts the right of preemption or homestead. In the House where there was more respect for the homestead principle and where the reform sentiment was more articulate, a demand was voiced for stripping from the Senate its unique power over Indian treaties. Under the leadership of George W. Julian and William S. Holman, backed by labor leaders, the WorkingmarCs Advocate, and that section of the public that was becoming in- creasingly critical of the political influence of the railroads, Congress was persuaded in 1871 to adopt a measure that ended the practice of making treaties with Indian tribes. On March 3, 1871, after ignoring criticisms of the way it was abusing its treaty-making powers for years, the Senate gave way. Thereafter it was no longer possible for Indian officials secretly to negotiate treaties containing important provisions concerning land policy that became law when ratified in executive session by the Senate alone.85 Meantime, an earlier treaty with the Osages, ratified in 1865, had provided for the cession of 843,927 acres in the eastern part of the reserve as trust lands, not subject to preemption or homestead. Before ratification the Senate had added an amendment that seemed innocuous, but became the center of an angrier dispute than did the later treaty. The amendment declared that the lands should be surveyed and sold as public lands under existing laws "including any act granting lands to the State of Kansas in aid of construction of a railroad through said lands. ..." Obviously, this amendment was included to make it possible for the L.L. & G. and the Katy to have their land grants extended across the ceded lands. Commissioner Joseph Wilson of the General Land Office held that the railroads had no rights in the ceded land, but he was reversed by Orville Browning, Secretary of the Interior. Meantime, 2,295 settlers had bought land in the ceded tract and now were required by the L.L. & G., under the decision of Browning, to pay for their land again at the rate of $4 to $10 an acre. Public opinion was now strongly hostile to the railroad and sympathetic to the settlers who were the victims of bureaucratic uncertainty and something closely akin to outright corruption. A Settlers' Protective Association, aided by an appropriation of the Kansas 85 I have discussed the struggle over the Osage Reserve and the end of treaty making in Fifty Million Acres, pp. 194 ff. |