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Show 128 REPORT OF COMMISSIONER OF INDIAN DBAIRS. PUPALLUP LANDS. During the last year $17,214.46 has been reported as having been collected on deferred payments for lands previously sold in the Puyallup Reservation in Washington-$8,766.62 being payments on allotted lands and $8,447.84 on Indian addition lots. On February 12, 1908, the supervisor who was then in charge of the Puyallup Agency reported that a former superintendent who had absconded, had deposited to his own credit in the National Bank of Commerce of Tacoma, Wash., $885.41 of the allotted funds and $960.32 of the Indian addition funds which he had collected, instead -of placing them to the credit of the Treasurer of the United States. It also appeared that he had misused $246.99 of the allotted land and $1,775.72 of the Indian addition funds. When his accounts shall have been finally settled and these sums collected on his bond they will be paid to the Indians entitled. The remainder of the $17,214.46 was properly placed to the credit of the Treasurer of the United States and disbursed under department authority to the parties entitled. An investigation of the sale by the superintendent of school tract -No. 2, as provided in the act of June 21,1906 (34 Stat. L., 377), cast a suspicion of fraud on that transaction, and the office recommended that a tender of tho consideration b& made to the purchasers and a reconveyance demanded of them, and that, in case of their refusal todeed back the land, suit be instituted to cancel the deed and restore ,the lands to the Indians. To avoid a suit they have reconveyed the -lands to the United States in trust for the Indians. PUYALLUP TIDE LANDS. On April 29, 1907, the Puyallup Indians entered into a contract with Charles Bedford, an attorney of Tacoma, Wash., to prosecute their claim to the lands adjacent to the reservation and hetween high and low tides for a contingent fee of 50 per cent of the land or pro-ceeds thereof that might be recovered. This contract was on Feb-ruary 3, 1008, approved by the department for a contingent fee of 25 per cent of the proceeds from all compromises or sales of land recovered by virtue of the contract, such compensation not to exceed, - however, $30,000, and no compromise to be final and effective until approved by the Secretary of the Interior. The history of the claim of these Indians relates back to 1854: when Isaac Stevens, governor of the Territow of Washington, en- ~ ~ tered into a treaty with the Nisqually and other Indians whereby there was set aside as a reservation for the Puyallup Indians a square tract containing 2 sections, or 1,280 acres, lying on the south |