OCR Text |
Show 89 EEPOBT OF COMMISSIONEB OF INDIAN A F F ~ S . claims should be referred to the Court of Claims and an order entered to take the depositions of the witnesses for the claimants, the o5cers of the Government would be at a great disadvantage in establishing a defense, bedause the depredations are alleged to have been com-mitted thirty-five years ago in an unsettled part of the country, with a scanty, shifting population, where the witnesses were known to the claimants and unknown to the defendants. Hence the o5m rec-ommended that the department pass on the evidence submitted, and either approve or disapprove the claims wholly, or in part, and then refer them to the accounting oEcers, as required by sections 464 and 466 of the Revised Statutes. Since the decision of the comptroller in the Gaines case this course has been followed in the investigation of 16 claims, amounting to $153,365, in all of which the department has approved the office recommendation that they be disallowed. They have also been disallowed by the Auditor for the Interior Depart-ment, but an appeal wan taken to the comptroller on the claim of Wyatt Gilchrist for $490. The Gilchrist claim had been investigated by the office and reported to the department on June 24,1881, with the Cecommendation that it be allowed in the sum of $300. No investigation or allowance of the claim was made by the Secretary, but it was sent, with others, to the Congress on January 12, 1882. A claim in favor of Overton Love had also been investigated by the ofice, and allowed on May 12,1881, in the sum of $7,350. In 1882 a bill introduced to settle on these terms the claims of 0. Love and Gilchrist was favorably reported in both the House and Senate, but did not become law. In 1884 the bill was again pre-sented, and was reported favorably in the House but unfavorably in the Senate, and the claim was returned to this o5ce: On April 22,1907, the attorney representing the claim of the estate of Gilchrist asked that it be transmitted to the Auditor for the Inte-rior Department. On June 12, 1907, the office reported it to the department adversely, reviewing the history of the Indian country at the time the depredation was alleged to have been committed, the &davits supporting the claim and the circumstances connected with its Wig and prosecution. The ofice argued that the act of March 3, 1885 (citing Buchanan u. The United States and the Apache Indians, 28 C. Cl., 127), required the Secretary to cause an investigation to be made and to report his determination on each claim, and that department letter of January 12, 1882, transmitting the claim to the Congress, was not such an investigation and allowance as was required by section 466 Revised Statutes, and that the comptroller, in the 0. Love case, had so held. |