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Show 122 REPORT OP THE COMMlSSIONER OF INDIAN AFFAIRB. I subject. The Department referred the matter to the Assistant Attorney- General who, March 17,1899, rendered an opinion, which was approved by the Department, concurring in the commission's views of the law. A copy of this opinion was forwarded to the commission for its guidance. Concerning the matter of making enrollments the Oartis Act is more in detail. Among other things it requires that the enrollments made by the wmmission shall be approved by the Secretary of the Interior, and wben so approved they shall be conclusive as to the rights of parties. In view of this provision the ofice suggested to the Depart-ment the expediency of instructing the Dawes Commission to preserve, for review by the Department, the record in all cases where the right to enrollment of any person is denied by the commission or is con-tested by the nation or by the applicant, so that wben the Department comes to consider the enrollments it will be enabled to pass intelli-gently upon the work of the commission, and to decide whether the conclusions reached by the commission in any particular case are cor-rect and just under the law and fact. This was done by Department letter to the commission dated Angust 8,1899. The commission replied indicating that it understands that its jurisdiction is exclusive and final in the matter of enrollments, and the Secretary is merely to perform the perfunctory act of approving. This view, however, the Department has overruled, and the commission was definitely instructed by letter dated July 25,1899, approved by the Secretary on August 8,1899, to preserve a sufficient record of each applicant for enrollment rejected by the commission for the information and nse of the Department in its review of the enrollment. The rolls of the Choctaw end Ohickasaw and the Seminole nations are a h a t completed, but have not yet been submitted. Mississippi Choctaw roll.-The Mississippi Cbootaws have been identi-fied by the commission under a clause in the aot. This roll, comprising nearly 2,000 names, the commission submitted with a report dated Maroh 10,1899. The rolls were not accompanied by any evidence of the r~ght so f the parties, and when they were received in this office with the letter of the Department dated June 6, for consideration and report, the office replied Jnne 13, inviting the attention of the Depart-ment to the language used in the act under which the commission was required to identify these Choctaws, and suggested that by this lan-guage the wmmission was given a special jurisdiction over this par-ticular question, and the Department would seem to have no authority to supervise the action of the commission in this regard. The Depart-ment, however, by a letter of August 10,1899, decided that under its jurisdiction to approve the rolls of citizenship in the Choctaw Nation, theDepartment had authority to investigate into the actionof the wm-mission in identifying the Mississippi Choctaws, but that this authority would not be exercised until the rolls of Choctaw citizenship came before the Department for approval, when, should any of these Missis- |
