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Show 10 BEPORT OF THE 8EORETABY OF THE IIPTEBIOB The department is mindful, too, of the benefits which might accrue to the Indians if some practical guaranty of the sanitary condition of such products were devised. The whole subject is receiving careful consideration. THE PUEBLO LANDS BOARD The Pueblo Lands Board, established by Congress in 1924, con-tinued its investigation of the status of Pueblo Indian lands and water rights in New Mexico. The board consists of the Attorney General, the Secretary of the Interior, and an appointee of the President, the two former acting through assistants. The Secretary of the Interior inspected the offices and records of the board at Santa Fe, N. Mex., in October, 1928, advised with the members and visited some of the pueblos. It is the duty of the Attorney General to bring suits to quiet title based on the reports of the board. After court proceedings and appeals shall have been concluded, the Secretary of the Interior is to issue patents to successful claimants. There are 20 pueblos within the scope of the investigations, each of them comprising from 13,000 to upward of 200,000 acres. The board has completed the investigation of the pueblos of Taos, Picuris, Nambe, Tesuque, Santo Domingo, San Felipe, Santa Ana, Zia, Sandia, Isleta, and Jemez, and has 6led its reports. In these 11 pueblos, 2,310 claims, affecting 26,165.6 acres, were considered and passed upon; 577 claims, affecting 18,579.47 acres, were rejected; and the remaining 1,733 claims were confirmed by the board in the claim-ants. In the pueblos of Pecos and Pojaque no Indians remain, but the board will investigate and pass upon title to the lands within the areas. It is doubtful whether the pueblo of Zuni comes within the law, and few adverse claims exist in Laguna and Acoma. The investigations in these five pueblos therefore will be less complicated and onerous. The remaining four pueblos-San Juan, Santa Clara, San Ildefonso, and Cochiti-are distributed over an area of about 125 miles in length and 100 miles in width. The work of the board involves hearings and investigations on each claim, the collection, translation, and abstracting of thousands of deeds. the examination of great numbers of witnesses, the study of extent, source, and character of Indian water rights and of adverse appropriations of Indian water by non-Indians. The board must consider the history and status of conflicting Spanish grants. It searches tax records in various county seats (which records are often incomplete and sometimes almost hopelessly confused). It appraises land values and estimates damages. It has many other collateral duties. |
