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Show -. COMMISSIONEFC OF INDIAN AFFAIRS. 41 Meanwhile, an official roll showing the blood status of White Earth allottees has been prepared and approved by the department. It is believed that the effective work which is being performed under the direction of the Attorney General will result in the restora-tion of a large part, if not all, of the lands involved to the Indians to whom the allotments were originally made, or, in case of their decease, to their heirs. Complete success means the recovery of 142,000 acres, valued at over $2,000,000, and for timber valued at $1,755,000, on behalf of more than 1,700 Indians, forming almost 34 per cent of the White Earth allottees. Vigorous opposition to this work has naturdy developed, and every kind of effort has been made to debauch the Indian testimony on which the recovery of these valuable holdings will depend. A great deal of criticism has also come from innocent purchasers residing in other States of the Middle West, who are seeking to make legitimate purchases on the White Earth Resema-tion. To relieve the situation as much as possible, the Department of Justice and the Interior Department have cooperated in issuing patents in fee to adult mixed-blood Indians as fast as possible in all cases where there has been no apparent taint of fraud. This re-moves any just criticism, which could at any time be made, about the action of the Indian Office, and the burden of having, as the cry was, iLgeneraUy clouded titles in that country,",is placed upon the speculators and others who consummated the frauds, rather than upon the department, which is protecting the Indians. MEXICAN KICKAPOO INDIANS. The long-pending complicated and expensive Mexican Kickapw cases have been settled in the Indians' favor. The =ckapoo Indians were given trust allotments of 80 acres each near Shawnee, in Oklahoma, in ppril, 1894, subject to the usual limitations against sale or encumbrance. An agitation was started shortly afterwards by outsiders to move such of these Indians as were then living in Oklahoma to Mexico to join a colony of poos already there, in the hope of continuing their tribal life unchecked by the encroaching tide of civilization. 'subsequent developments have shown pretty conclusively that some of the foremost promoters of this plan were not actuated wholly by philanthropic motives, but by a desire to get these valn-able allotments for themselves as cheaply as possible. At any rate, they argued that the suocess of their plan required that the Okla-homa allotments held in trust by the Government for the Indians be sold and the proceeds used in transporting to and s e t t l i i these Indians in their new homes. |