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Show 30 The actions referred to below follow the findings of the Supreme Court of the United States in the Joseph decision and the prior practices of territorial and Federal officials and ignore the case cited above. After 1900, the Congress began to reverse the actions of New Mexico Territory and, thereby, to set precedents for the requirements placed in the Enabling Act which established conditions governing New Mexico's admission to statehood. In 1891, the Attorney General ruled that Federal statutes authorizing the Commissioner of Indian Affairs to license and regulate Indian traders had no application to the Pueblos. In 1894, the Assistant Attorney General for the Department of the Interior ruled that laws relating to the approval of leases of Indian tribal land had no application to the Pueblos. In 1900, in the case of Pueblo of Nambe v. Romero, the territorial court, in a suit to quiet title brought by an alleged conveyee of pueblo lands, issued a decree against the pueblo, basing such decree upon a finding that the pueblo had validly granted away the land in question and upon holding that the territorial statute of limitations ran against the pueblo. In 1904, in the case of Territory of New Mexico v. Delin-quent Taxpayers, the attempt to collect taxes on pueblo lands was upheld by the territorial court on the basis of the reasoning in the Lucero and Joseph cases. This ruling, however, ...was reversed by congressional enactment. In 1907, in United States v. Mares, the territorial court held that the Pueblo Indians were not covered by Indian liquor laws making it an offense to sell or give intoxicants to 'any Indian to whom allotment of land has been made while the title to the same shall be held in trust by the government, or Indian superintendent or agent, or any Indian, including mixed bloods, over whom the government, through its departments exercises guardianship.' This ruling, again, was reversed by Congress, in the New Mexico Enabling Act (Federal Indian Law, 901-902). The following portions of the Enabling Act make the sense of the Congress in relation to the Pueblo Indians of New Mexico apparent as of June, 1910: |