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Show COMMISSIONER or ISDIAN AFFAIRS. lix (6) That under the present law when thesecretary of the Interior re-fused approval of a deed the status of the land is left under a cloud, and there is nowhere competent jurisdiction to removeit. In these statements this office concurs, and expresses the opinion that the Senate substitute should be enacted. UNITED STATZS COURTS IN THE INDIAN TEREITORY. There are now pending in Congress seven bills, all having for their object the establishment of United States judicial anthoritx over the Indrsn Territory, in which no court now has jurisdiction id civil cases between Indians and other persous, and in a large part of which no conrt has criminal jurisdiction, section 9 of the act of March 3,1885, being defective in this respect. That section extends over Indian reser-vations located in Territories in which territorial governments exercise jurisdiction under authority of Congress, the criminal laws of those Ter-ritories, and the authority of their courts; but there is no territorial government within the Indian Ter r i tor~;a nd outside of the Five Civil-ized Tribes there are no courts. A bill (8. R. 1304) conferring, in cer-tain cases arisingin that Territory, civil jurisdiction on the United States courts, that now or hereafter may exercise criminal jnrisdiction over said Territory, passed the House of Represent~tives during the last session, but was adversely reported from the Senate Committee on Judiciary, and w;bs indeEnitelp postponed. A bill lL conferring jurisdic-tion on the United States courts over the Indian country in certain criminal cases," is now pending in the House of Liepresentatives. DISPUTED CITIZENSHIP IN THE CHEEOKEE NATION. Oh March 1, 1885, in the case of the eastern band of Cherokees us. Theunited Statesand the Cherokee Nation (lli U. S., 311) the Supreme Court rendered a decision that the Cherokee Nation had sole l~omert o determine all claims, hased on blood or descent, to citizenship in that nation. On August 11 following, Agent Owen, of the Cuion Agency, was in-stri~ ctedto stop issuing what were known at that' time as prima facie certificates of citizenship in the Cherokee Nation, and he was directed 1 to give general notice that after that date no snch claimants to citizen-ship could enter the nation by any authority or recognition of lhe In- ' ' dian Bureau. In passing upon claims to citizenship instituted prior to August 11, 1886, tRe Cherokee authorities have not only decided many snch claims adversely, and denounced the claimants as intruders and demanded that the Department remove them, but they have gone farther and have forcibly deported such claimants and have seized their improvements, which they hdve sold at public auction, ostensibly for the benefit of the deported claimants, bnt usually at one-tenth of the actual raloe thereof. |