Annual Report of the Commissioner of Indian Affairs - 1907

Page 100

100 REPORT OF THE COMMISSIONER OF INDIAN AFFAIRS. LEASING AND SALE OF LANDS. Since the promulgation of the regulations of July 10, 1903, 867 tracts of land in the Creek Nation have been sold, with the approval of the Department, aggregating 73,379.42 acres, which brought $1,153,748.39, a little more than $15.72 per acre. No change has been made in the law with reference to the sale of Choctaw and Chickasaw coal and asphalt lands; but in accordance with the act of June 21,1906 (34 Stat. L., 325), the Departmentis having the lands explored with a view to determining their mineral resources and values, for which the act authorizes the expenditure of not exceeding $50,000 of any funds of the Choctaw and Chickasaw nations in the Treasury. No surplus lands in any of the nations have been offered for sale. No such action can be taken until allotments have been made to all of the citizens of the nation to which the surplus belongs. INCORPORATING TRIBES. In my last report I devoted a short passage to the consideration of a plan I had in mind for administering the estates of any Indian tribe who owned property of enough value to make it worth while, by incorporating the tribe as a joint stock company, with such safeguards in the act of incorporation as would protect the indi-vidual shareholders from their own improvidence and the company as a whole from a careless directorate. When the concrete problem of the disposal of the mineral-bearing lands of the Choctaws and Chickasaws became acute during the last session of, Congress, the Hon. Moses E. Clapp, Senator from Minnesota and chairman of the Senate Committee on Indian Affairs, introduced this bill (S. 8286) : Be .Ct enacted 6y the Senate md House of Replresentatiueu of the United States of America in Congress assmBled, That there is hereby created a corporation, to be known as the Choctaw-Chickasaw Coal, Oil and Asphalt Land Company, the purIlose of which is to take title to, manage, and dispose of the coai, oil, and asphalt iands and deposits in the Choctaw and Chickasaw nations for the use and heneUt of the persons whose names shall appear on the citizenship rolls of me Choctaw and Chickasaw nations Unaily approved by the Secretary of the Interior, and who are, under existing law, entitled to share in the distribution of the funds arising from the sale of the lands and dewsits segregated tly written order of the Secretary of the Interior, on March twenty-fourth, ninetettn hundred and three, by virtue of and in accordance with the provisions of section Bfty-eight of the act of Cangress approved on July Urst, nineteen hundred and two (Thirty-second Statutes at Large, page slx hundred and forty-one), and of any other lands or deposits in the Choctaw and Chickasaw nations that may have been segregated in like manner by order of the Secretary of the Interior or by act of Congress or added by direction of any act of Congress to any existing coai or asphalt lease theretofore made in accordance with law and in me royalties, rents, and profita accruing therefr'om.