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Show 21 as certain lawyers, territorial judges, and government officials had thought; and, as was found in the Walapai case, for example, representatives of the Department of the Interior learned that they could not give away to a third party, in this case the Santa Fe Pacific Railway, that which was not theirs to give, even though the "Congress implicitly ratified this view of the situation" when it authorized the arrangement with the railroad on the part of the Secretary of the Interior. Although the Attorney General of Arizona stated that "any suggestion by this Court that Indian tribes might have rights in property enforcible in a court of law by the mere fact of occupancy would at least cast a cloud upon the title to the major portion of Arizona ...," the Supreme Court unanimously decided the Walapai case in favor of the Indians (United States as Guardian of the Hualapai Indians vs. Santa Fe Pacific Railroad Company, 314 U.S. 339-360). The Court, in holding "that Indian occupancy, even though unrecognized by treaty or act of Congress, established property rights valid against non- Indian grantees," was very near the position held by Francisco de Vitoria at the University of Salamanca in 1532 when he declared: "Since unbelief does not preclude ownership of property, the Indians are not precluded from owning property, and they are therefore the true owners of the New World, as they were before the advent of the Spaniards." Both Spain and the United States were thus stating, and would uphold in law if not always in practice, that aboriginal occupancy gave title to Indians that would be recognized against |