OCR Text |
Show COMMISSIONER OF INDIAN AFFAIRS. liii It has been held by this office that both the act of 1875 and section 5388 of the Revised Statutes were adopted, the former for the single purpose of 1)rotecting timber ou land purchased or reserved for the use of the military or any other branchof the Government, and thelatter to prohibit the destruction of trees on land pnrehased or reserved for pub-lic use. In the report of 1879, the Commissioner, in a discussiou of this section and act, said: Neither the provisions of the section referred to nor the act are suRioiently compre-hensive (especiail~i n view of the law whioh requires orimind statntes to be con. strued strictly) in extent to include parties who have out or destropd tilnbsr on :land within a large portion of the Indian reservation. In enforcing this proposition the Commissioner called attention to a decision of the United States Distriot Court for the Western District; of Arkansas, tllat the lands within theCherokee Reservation; in the Indian Territory, were not lands of the United States in the sense ofthe language used iu section 5388, aud that there was 110 lam to punish parties for eommit.t,ingd epredatio~~thse reou. "The reaiol~ingo f the court:' said the Cr)~nmissioner, will apply with equal force to the lands of the Uhoctarrs, Chickasaws, Creeks, Seminoles, and certain other Indians?' He therefore advised tho enactment of a lam to prevent parties from settling upon or cutting or n-antonly destroying timber on the follow-ing classes of reservations: (1) Lands to whioh t.he original India11 title has never been extinguished, but which have not been specially reserved by treaty or by act of Congress or otherwise for the use of Indians or for other lmrposes, although the Indians' right of occupancy thereof has been tacitly recoguized by the Government; (2) lands ex-pressly reserved by treaty or by act of Congress, or set apart fir the use of Indians by executive order of the President; (3) lauds allotted or patented to individual Indians who are not under the laws of any State or Territory; (4) lands pateute? to Indian tribes; and (5) lands which hare been purchased by or ceded to the United 8tates for the purpose of sethling Indians thereon, but which are yet unoccupied. This advice of the Commissioner was not taken by Congress, and thereafter theoffico often called attention to the suggested amendmeats, and reiterated that there was pressing necessity for their enactment. On January 20,1883, the Commiosioner proposed the following amend-ment of section 5388, as quoted above : "After the word 'purpose' insert the following : 'Or up011 any Indian reservation or land belonging to or occupied by any tribe of I~~tlians.'" Finally, in 1888, the section was amended by the passage of the fol-lowing act, which Tas approved on June 4, 1888. The amendments made are indicated by italics : That section fifty-three hundred aud eightysight of the Revised St.atutes of the , United States be amended to read as follons : "Every person who nolawfully outs, .or aids or is employed in nulawfnliy cnttiog, or wantonly destroys or procures to bo waotoniy destroyed, any timber atsnding upon the land of the United States which, in plirsnanoe of law, may be rcaarved or purohilsed for military or otlter purposes, or |