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Show 62 REPORT OF THE COMMIGSIONER OF INDIAE AFFAIRS. complained of. Two reports on the subject have been received from him. In the first, dated July 10, 1894, he gave detailed statement of several murders among the Indians which were the direct result of the sale of whisky to them by the parties located on the strip, and said tbat his Indian police were inefficient in detecting the violators of the inter- .course laws, and unable to deal with the matter. I therefore recom. mended in a report to the Department of August 1'7,1894, that the De-partment of Justice be requested to send a special agent to the Uintah Agency for the purpose of detecting the parties guilty of the illicit trafic in liquors with the Indians, and expressed the belief that the con- ~i c t ionof some of the parties would have the etfeot to deter %he others from further violat,ions of the law in this respect. The sales of liquor to Indians who have received their allotments and therefore become citizens of the United States, and the attitude of the courts toward that question, threaten serious embarrassment in the admiuidtration of Iudian affairs. In 1890 the 0. S. district court for Washington decided that the Puyallup Indians in that State were .citizens of the United States; that the United States was not author-ized to maintain an agency over them, and tbat the Iudians were not under the charge of a U. 8. Indian agent within the meaning of the intercourse acts prohibiting the sale of liquor to Indians. I have recently received reports from agent,s of the Shoshone Agency, Wyo., and the Graude Ronde Agei~cy, Oreg., inviting attention to a decision by Judge Bellinger of the district of Oregon, in which it is held that Thomas Kawkes and Edward Kline, charged with selling liquors to Indians who have received allotments in severalty, had not violated the law for the reason that the allotment of lands iu severalty to Indians has removed them from under the charge of Indian agents and given them the standing of American citizens, and that as such the laws of the United States governing Indian wards of the Government do not apply to them, since theselling of liquor to an Iudian who is not in charge of a U. S. Indian agent isnot punishable under the United States stat-utes. In commenting on this decision, Oript. Ray of the Shoshone Agency says that if the interpretation of the law as laid down by Judge Bel-linger is correct he does not think any advantages to be derived by the Indians from allotments will compensate for the evils that will fol-low the opening of the reservations to whisky sellers, and that in their present condition it will practically destroy the ludians to remove them from the protection of the agent and turn them over to the most lawless element on the frontier. Agent Rrentano of theGrande Ronde Agency reports that since this decisipn was rendered by Judge Bel-linger a very large number of the Indians have gone off the reserva-tion and become "gloriously drunk." He predicts that if the Indians .are going to be permitted to drink all the whisky they like, the conse-quences are gretltly to be feared. |