| OCR Text |
Show in good faith prior to December 16, 1895, made permanent and valuable improvements on Cherokee lands, should be allowed a reasonable time within which to dispose of them to citizens of the nation who were entitled to select allotments, and at a valuation to be fixed by some officer of the Government. I submitted a draft of a bill to carry this into effect, which became a law on March 2, 1907. (34 Stat. L., 1220.) Intermarried whites were allowed until May 2, 1907, to dispose of their improvements, and the Commissioner to the Five Civilized Tribes was selected as the officer to fix the valuation at which they should be allowed to sell them to enrolled Cherokees. Most of them sold their improvements, and, on the whole, it is con-sidered that the action taken by the Congress was equitable and just. CHOCTAW-CHICKASAW FREEDMEN. Article 3 of the treaty of April 28,1866 (14 Stat. L., 769), author-izes the Choctaw and Chickasaw nations to adopt their freedmen, and provides that, when the land is allotted, the freedmen and their decendants shall be given " forty acres each of land of said nations, on the same terms as the Choctaws and Chickasaws." On October 26, 1883, the principal chief approved an act of the national council of the Choctaw Nation adopting the freedmen, which was held by the Department to be a substantial compliance with the ad of May 17, 1882 (22 Stat. L., 73), and the treaty of 1866. On January 10,1873, the Chickasaw legislature likewise passed an act adopting the freedmen of that nation in accordance with the treaty. The act was forwarded to the President, who laid it before the Speaker of the House of Representatives on February 10, 1878. It was referred to the Committee on Freedmen Affairs, but no further action was taken on the subject until August 15,1894, when the Con-gress passed an act (28 Stat. L., 286) approving the Chickasaw act of 1873 which adopted the freedmen. Meanwhile, on October 22, 1885, the Chickasaw legislature had repealed that act. The right of the freedmen to share in Choctaw and Chickasaw lands without compensation to the nations was afterwards passed on by the Court of Claims and the Supreme Court of the United States, which were given jurisdiction of the case by the Choctaw-Chickasaw supplemental agreement. The Supreme Court declared that under the supplemental agreement, " and not independent thereof," the Chickasaw freedmen were entitled to land of the value of 40 acres of the average allottable land, and that the Choctaw and Chickasaw nations were entitled to compensation from the United States for such land in accordance with the agreement. (See 193 U. S., 115.) Many persons enrolled as Choctaw and Chickasaw freedmen have taken the position, through their attorneys, that those who were in |
