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Show domain without Indian consent as it had done in 1864 to the Utah Indian Reservations at Corn Creek, San Pete, Spanish Fork, and Deep Creek. 135 Utah Senator Rawlins, who had participated in the futile efforts to negotiate with the Utes, further maintained that the only obligation the government ever incurred in moving the Utes from Colorado to Utah was to provide them homes, which allotment would do. 136 In May of 1902 Congress granted authority to the Secretary of the Interior to allot land of the Unitah Reservation to the Uintahs and White Rivers and to open the rest of the lands to entry and settlement. 137 The proceeds of the sale of these lands were to be used for the benefit of the Indians. The allotments for the Uintahs and White Rivers were to be 80 acres- half the acreage originally allotted to the Uncompahgres. The allotting and subsequent opening of the reservation were to be done only with the consent of the majority of the adult male Uintah and White River Utes. However, no appropriation was provided for the purpose of carrying out the act. In another law enacted that year, authority was granted to assign the rest of the allotments to the Uncompahgres in 80- acre plots on the Uintah Reservation, and to set aside a small amount of grazing land for joint use by all three bands. The grazing lands were later defined by an Act of March 3, 1903, to be not more than 250,000 acres confined to lands south of the Strawberry River. 139 On January 5, 1903, the U. S. Supreme Court ruled in Lone Wolf vs. Hitchcock that Congress had plenary authority over Indian relations and had the power to pass laws abrogating treaty stipulations. 140 The Supreme Court declared constitutional a law passed by Congress which had provided for allotments, a common grazing area, and the opening of the reservation to settlement on a specific date despite the lack of Indian consent. Apparently supported by the Lone Wolf decision, Congress felt more assured to use arbitrary means to secure land from the Uintah Reservation Utes. Congress passed an Act March 3, 1903, which appropriated funds to carry out the provisions of the Act of May 1902.141 Under the Act, surveys of the reservation were to be made, and an inspector was to be sent to obtain the consent of the Uintah and White River Utes to allotment of their lands as directed by the May 1902 Act. However, the Act further provided that if their consent could not be obtained by June 1, 1903, then the Secretary of Interior would cause the land to be allotted without their consent. The Utah Congressional delegation in the person of George Sutherland objected to the appropriation of funds under the March 3, 1903 Act to survey the reservation boundaries. He explained the need for a survey was only to convince the Indians that a fraud was not being perpetrated upon them: They have alleged that the line was not in fact laid out at all... and that the white people of Utah have since claimed the line was wherever they chose and have maintained it, and because of that fact white persons have encroached very materially upon their 29 |