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Show I l4 XEPORT OF TEE proper to impose. In the absence of such necessary legislation there is no authority to sanction or confirm any permanent disposition which the reservees may desire to make of the lands thus secured to them, however important it might be for their interests and. welfare. The thirteenth section of the act of the 12th of June last, "making appropriations for certain civil expenses of the government," estab-lished "the line surveyed by John C. McCoy, in eighteen hundred and thirty-eight, as tbe western boundary of the half-breed tract, specified in the tenth article of the treaty made between commission-ers on the part of the United States and certain Indian tribes, at Prairie du Chien, on the 15th of July, 1830," as "the true western boundary of said tract.". I beg leave to state that it has been clearly and satisfactorily ascertained that said line is not in accordance with the positive and specific requirementsof the treaty, and tbat if the above quoted provision is to prevail, the Indians interested will be deprived of over seventeen thousand acres of land to which they are justly entitled by the treaty, which is and should be regarded as the supreme law. The act of Congress of the 8th of June last required that the sale . ' which had been made by the Christian Indians to A. J. Isacks, of the reservation of four sections of land whicb they held in Kansas, I should be confirmed by the President on the payment of the purchase money, viz : $45,400, to the Secretary of the Interior within ninety days after the passage of the act, the amount to be applied in part for the purchase of a permanent home, the erection of buildings, and for other beneficial objects for the Indians, and the remainder to be invested for the support of a school among them. The money having been so paid, the sale was duly confirmed, and measures will be adopted to . . procure those Indians a suitable home. In conformity with the provision of the 2d section of the act of March 3, 1853, treaties were entered into in March and April last with the Poucas and the Yancton Sioux, who reside west of Iowa, for the purpose of extinguishing their title to a11 the lands occupied and claimed by them, except small portions on which to colonize and domesticate them. This proceeding was also deemed to be essentially necessary in order to obtain such control over those Indiana as to prevent their interference with our settlements, whicb are rapidly extending in that direction. Those treaties were duly laid before the Senate at its last regular session, but were not,it is understood, finally acted on by tbat body. Relying upon the ratification of their treaty and the adoption of timely measures to carry out its provisions in their favor, the Poncas proceeded, in good faith, to comply with its stipulations on their part, i by abandoning their settlements and hunting grounds, and withdraw-ing to the small tract reserved for their future home. Being without a crop to rely upon, and having been unsuccessful in their usual summer hunt, they were reduced to a state of destitution and despera-tion. As nothing had been done for them under the treaty, they concluded it was void, and threatened to fall back upon their former settlements, some of the most important of which had, in the mean- , time, been taken possession of, and were occupied by numerous white i |