OCR Text |
Show as have been recommended for allotment, reported that he had sus pended the services of bis surveyor and assistants because at that time there vere no other reservations patented and ready for allotment. Before allotments in severalty can be made on any of themission reser-vations a patent must be issued to the band of Indians in common for the reservation occupied by it; and before a patent can be issued the reservation and lands contiguous thereto must be surveyed by the ' General Land Office as public lands are surveyed. Upon the receipt of Special Agent PatCon's report the attention of the Commissioner of the General Land Office mas iuvited by letter of September 17,1895, toprevious correspondence relative to the surveys of public lands surrounding certain of the mission reservations, and to the enforced discontinuance of allotments because of the delay in get-ting patents for the reservations; and he was a,gain requested to inform this office as tothe status of the surveys of public lands surrounding the Morongo, Agua Caliente, Coahuila, Los Coyotes, and Torros reser-vations, and as to the probable time when patents therefor migllt be . expected, particularly for t.he first three named. Meantime the special agent has been engaged in correcting and revising the work of his predecessors and in correcting the work of depnty surveyors. Mnchdifficulty aud delay have been caused by the system under mhich these allotments are made. After issuance of patent to the reservation the allotting agent allots the agricultural land in 10 or 20 %re tracts, the former to single persons over 21 years of age and the latter to heads of families. The tracts are irregular in shape, so as to include the scattered improvements of the Indians. The deseriptious of the lots or tracts are then sent to the surveyor-general for California, who plats them in his office and computes the area of each lot, and the allot. ment is scheduled as lot No. -of section -, etc. The plats are then sent by the sCrveyor-general to the Commissioner of the General Land Office for further examination and acceptance, after which they are sent to this office. Nothing can be done with the schednles until the receipt of the plats? and the latter are very slow in reaching here. Considerable delay has also been caused by friction between the sur-veyor- general for California and the depnty surveyor over the manner of making the surveys. Fortunately, however, there remain to be allotted only the five reservations named, and of them only the Agua Caliente has been patented and is ready for allotment. The proposed exchange of lands with the Southern Pacific Railroad Company so that the Indians may secure possession of certain tracts o.wned by the company within the San Jacinto, Torros, and Morongo reservations, as recommended by the Mission Indian Commissioners, has not yet been effected, because neither the lands deslred by the 1udia.na nor those desired by the company have yet been surveyed. Klamuth Reservation, 0reg.-Special Agent Charles E. Worden is still engaged in making allotments on the Klamath Reservation. He reports that he has made 613 allotnlcnta. Owing to complioations |