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Show COMMISSIONER OF INDIAN AFFAIRS 13 I would respectfully call attention to the recommendation in your annual report and that of this office for last year, in regard to the establishment of a federal court or courts for the convenience and benefit of the Choctaws, Chickasaws, Creeks, and Cherokees. It is certainly a provision which they are justly entitled to have made for them, in consideration of their condition and the inconveniences and disadvantages under which they now labor. The several well grounded recommendationspontained in last gear's annual report on Indian affairs, in regard to the Iudians in Kansas and Nebraska, very clearly point out the course of policy to be pur-sued towards them, and are therefore respectfully renewed. I would, however, ask special attention to the necessity which exists for immediate legislation respecting the lauds in Kansas formerly in-tended far the Indians of New York. By the second article of the treaty with those Indians of January 15, 1838, it was provided that a. tract, with certain metes and bounds should be set apart for them, "to . include one million, eight hundred and twenty-four thousand acres of, laud, being three hundred and twenty acres for each soul of said Indians as their number are at present computed," and "with full power and authority in the said Indiaus to divide said lands among the different tribes, nations, or bauds in severalty." By the third article, such of them as did not accept and remove to the lands thus set apart for them within five years, or such other time as the Presi-dent should appoint, were to forfeit all interest therein. Only a small number of them so accepted and removed, the greater body having remained and being now permanently located in the State of New York. Those who went and are now living are entitled to have their shares assigned to them, after which the remaining lands should be brought into market and sold ; but the department has no authority to adopt either measure, because, by the treaty, the lands were sepa-. rated from the public domain for the purpose stated, and the division among the individual Indians was to be made amongst themselves by their tribes and bands after removal. The proper legislation in the case is therefore necessary, especially as the tract is being rapidly settled up, and it may soon be difticult to assign the Indiaus their shares without doing injustice to those who have in good faith made locations and improvements upon the lands, under the impression that they were public lands and open to settlement. I would further state that, to avoid conflicts of jurisdiction and other difficulties, it is necessary that the twenty-fourth section of the act of June 30,1834, to regulate trade and intercourse with the Indian tribes, which for judicial purposes attached to Missouri the whole of 1 the then Indian country west of that State, shall be so amended and changed as to vest in the United States courts in Kansas and Ne- ; braska the jurisdiction in all cases arising under that act which it , conferred upon the United States district court for Missouri. It is important that there be some early legislation in regard to. I those provisions in the treaties of 1854 with the Shawnees and the ; Kaskaskias, Piankeshaws, Peorias and Weas, which subject the alienation of the lands secured to individual members of those tribes 1 or bands to such re~trictiousa s the President or Congress may think |
