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Show REPORT OF THE COMMISSIONER OF INDIAN AFFAIRS. 99 Since that decision of 1887 was rendered, the Winans Bros., the Scufert Bros., and others have erected fish wheels in the Columbia River, denied the Indians the right to fish therein, and obstructed their ingress and egress there. The commissioner of public lands for the State of Washington has published various notices of applications by certain parties to purchase shore lands along the Columbia River between the high and low water marks. The infringement of the fishery rights of these Indians by the whites above named and the application to purchase from the State of Wash-ington shore lands along the Columbia have been laid before the Department of Justice with recommendation that the United States attorney for the State of Washington be instructed to take such action in each case as might be necessary to protect the rights of the Indians. By Department reference I received a communication dated January 22,1896, from the Attorney-General, inclosing copy of one dated the 16th of that month from William H. Brinker, United States attorney, stating that on July 11,1895, he filed a bill in equity in the United States circuit conrt for the southern division of the district of Wash-ington in the name of the United Stateu, on behalf of the Yakima Nation of Indians, against Winans Bros., to enjoin the defendants from interferiugmith thoseIndians in taking fish from theColumbia River at the Tom Water Fisheries; that a temporary injunction mas issued on the same date; that on October 7 the defendants filed a demurrer to the bill ; that on November 18 the demurrer was argued and submitted and taken under advisement by the court, which had not then (January 15) been decided; that on November 19 a stipulation was filed per-mittingthe Indians and defendants to fish in common until the final hearing in the case, and that the injunction as modified by the stipula-tionis still in force. I am now in receipt, by Department reference, of a communicatiou dated Xarch 23,1896, from the Attorney-General, stating, among other things, that the treaty of 1865 with these Indians established a kind of servitude in the ceded lands in the nature of s right of temporary injunction in favor of the tribe or tribes which had at least the right of occupancy in the lands; that, the treaty being the supreme law of the land, the State of Washington, while the owner of shore lands, with power to sell them, can not deprive the Indians by law, patent, or other-wise of this right; that he has no doubt that the courts would eujoin all persons interfering with the exercise of the rightj that 5 suit 01, suits for injunction could be instituted against past or future purchas-ers of land which ihcludes places where Indians are accustomed to fish, and that dl such purchasers could be forbidden to interfere with the Indians, and that the purchasers themselves wodd doubtless prevent others from so interfering. The Attorney-General then suggested that it might be well to have the attention of the government of Washington |