Page:Federal Reporter, 1st Series, Volume 8.djvu/758

744 FEDERAL REPORTES. �laws which are applicable to the cases of possession of land do net reach her case. �There is one expression used in the opinion of the supreme court in Crews v. Buroham, already referred to, which might, perhaps, throw some doubt upon the question made by the plaintiii in this case. That language is: "It is true that no title to the particular lands in question could vest in the reservee or in his grantee until the location by the president, and perhaps the issuing of the patent." It seems to me the doubt implied by the use of this lan- guage can hardly be considered as entitled to much consideration in such a case as this, where the defendants claim, not through another and independant title, but through the title granted by the treaty and through the reservee named in the treaty, so that there was nothing to make the title complete in the reservee or his assignee except the mere issuing of the patent. Under our law, for the purpose of asserting a right to the land, an action of ejectment, or of trespass or any other action to enforce a right which existed, was maintainable ;. and the issue of the patent was the mere con- summation of a teohical right, and nothing more. It was analogous to the common case under our law of a tract of land'purchased of the United States and the money paid, and possession taken by the purchaser, under a receipt of the receiver of the land-ofiSce or a certiacate of the register, and after this bas taken place a patent issues to him. In SRch case the purchaser bas always been con- sidered, even before the issue of the patent, as clothed with all the material rights of ownership to the land. And in the case supposed, where the patent issued to, him, no one else can question bisprior right. It is only where there is a title independent of bis, in which a patent may issue to some third party for the same land, that any question can arise. �Some stress bas been laid upon the fact that the plaintif was ignorant of the tracts of land which had been selected for her hus- band, and of her husband's rights to this particular property, as well as of the issuing of the patent, until years after bis death. I do not think this argument can be considered conclusive as against those who were in the actual possession of the land, holding under a title from her husband himself . It cannot be maintained that after a per- fect title to lands exists within this state, by a grant to an Indian, be is «xempt, or the land is exempt, from all the ordinary burdens and incidents which the law of the state imposes upon the owneijs of ��� �