OCR Text |
Show 20 REPORTS OF THE DEPARTMENT OF THE INTERIOR. ble faults found in articles of corresponding classes furnished in former years. Wherever it has been practicable, also, members of the field staff have been commissioned to inspect the goods sent by the con-tractors to the several warehouses for shipment to the reservations. SALE OF LIQUOR TO INDIANS. During the last year fresh efforts have been made by persons engaged in the liquor traffic to elude the law forbidding the introdnc-t. ion of liquor into the Indian country. They have bought land on reservations from heirs of dead allottees and prepared to engage in the business of selling liquor, insisting that, as they had warranty deeds to the land, it was no longi?r Indian country, and they had the same right to engage in any business on that land as on land owned by them off the reservations. This Office has maintained that such land was still Indian coun-try within the meaning of the law against the introduction of liquor into the Indian country, and has served notice that it would under-take to prosecute all parties engaged in the sale'of liquor on any land within the bounds of an Indian reservation. In February last the United States attorney at St. Paul, Minn., reported that a party had been indicted for introducing liquor into ' the Indian country and would offer in defense a deed of inherited Indian land. He was of opinion that the sale of liquor on such land was in violation of law, but he asked for the views of the Office upon the question and for a citation of the authority sustaining them. The opinion of the Office was stated and the law and the treaty relied upon in that particular case were cited. The case came on for hearing on March 29,1905, in the third division of the United States district court of Minnesota, on a writ of liabeas corpus, and Judge Lochren rendered the opinion, which is as follows: It appears that on a complaint made to a United States commissioner charg-ing the petitioner with having on the 14th day of March, 1905, wrongfully introduced intg the Indian country on the Chippewa Indian Reservation intoxi-cating liquor, to wit, 1 gallon of whisky and 1 gallon of beer, contrary to the statute of the United States, the petltioner was arrested upon a warrant issued by the commissioner, and after a hearing was committed to the county jail of St. Lonis County to await the action of the grand jury at the next term of the district court to be holden at Duluth. He claims that he Is wrongfully arrested, and that in fact there was no offense committed. Upon the hearing it is admitted that this liquor was introduced upon a tract of land in said reservation which had been obtained by allotment by an Indian woman named Apwhay, and afterwards, at her death, the title passed to her heirs, who made a deed of i:he property to one Frank Gorenflo, which was duly approved by the Secretary of the Interior. Upon these facts the petitioner claims that this land, upon which the liquor was so introduced, was not IndIan country and that the am: of Introducing liquor there was no offense against the laws of the United States. It ie admitted upon the hearing that up to the year 1889 |