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Show 80 BEPOBT OF COMMISSIONER OF I N D U AFFAIBS. The act of March 3, 1891 (26 Stat. L., 851), conferred upon the Court of Claims authority to inquire into and finally adjust all claims for property of citizens of the United States taken or destroyed by Indians belonging to any tribe in amity with the United States; provided that such claims had been allowed or were pending before the Secretary of the Interior or the Congress at the time of the passage of the act, and that they were submitted to the court by petition within three years thereafter. The act provided also that investigation and examination by the Secretary of the Interior, as directed by former acts, should cease. In the case of Valk v. United States and Rogue River Indians (28 C. Cl., 241), it was held that the act of March 3,1891, was applicable only to claims of persons who were citizens of the United States at the time the depredations were committed. The court made the same ruling in the case of Johnson v. The United States and the Ute Indians (29 C. Cl., 1). When appealed to the Supreme Court of the United States, the ruling of the lower court was sustained (160 U. S., 546). In 1901, in considering the claim of Overton Love, a noncitizen Chickasaw Indian, the Comptroller of the Treasury (7 Comp. Dec., 308) wised the question whether, inasmuch as the act of March 3, 1891, provided a special forum for citizens, section 13 of that act must be construed as taking from the administrative officers their duty to make an examination of claims of noncitizens. In his opinion, it was not reasonable to suppose that the Congress intended to provide a special forum and easy means for the adjudication of claims of citizens against Indians, and at the same time to take away the only forum which noncitizen Indians had for the examination and settlement of their clqims. He held that sections 466, 464, and 236 of the Revised Statutes were left in full operation as to claims of noncitizens, and that under section 466 it was the duty of the Secre-tary to prescribe regulations for the ilivestigation of such claims, while under section 464 it was the duty of tlie Commissioner of Indian Affairs to make an administrative examination and forward the claims to the accounting officers, who w.ere required by section 236 to make settlements. An attorney holding a power of attorney to prosecute several of the Choctaw and Chickasaw claims, contended that they should be sent to the Court of Claims to be considered under what is known as the Bowman Act (22 Stat. L., 485), where the interests of the Gov-ernment could be defended by able counsel employed for that pur-pose. Seven of these claims were so referred, among them those of James T. Gaines, a Chickasaw. On February 16,1905, the office forwarded to the Court of Claims, to be used as evidence, all the papers in his case. They covered two |