Page:Federal Reporter, 1st Series, Volume 8.djvu/903

UNITED STATES V. PATNE. 889 �vIew of the urgent necessities of the United States for more lands in the Indian Territory," it requires a cession by said Seminole nation of a part of its present reservation. What was this urgent neoessity for more lands in the Indian Territory ? Certainly not to settle citi- zen s of the United States upon, beoause it is a part of the open his- tory of the times that both the legislative and executive departments of the government have oonstantly and all the time refused to do this, and the executive department has at all times put forth its arm to keep citizens of the United States eut of that country. Then, could it have been desired by the government for settlement by the citizens of the United States under the homestead and pre-emption laws? Hardly, in the face of the fact already cited, and of the further fact that the government had given its pledges by its treaties and laws, from the organization and occupation of that country by the Indians, that, with the exception of a few privileged persons, white settlers were to be kept out of that country. Those pledges remain to this day, and the government, through its executive, whose duty it is to execute them, has constantly sought to make them good. Ail the tribes in the Indian Territory have implied or express pledges made in treaties or laws of the United States that they are to be free from the intrusion of white persons. Whether this policy is right or wrong, whether it'is a good or bad one, persons may entertain a difference of opinion. The courts did not establish it, but the law-iuaking power did. The courts cannot change it, as they do not make the laws. It œust be changed by the power that established it. Can it be presumed, in the face of these pledges, that the United States feit an urgent necessity pressing upon it for this comparatively small tract of country between the Canadian rivera that it might open it to white settlement, surrounded as it is on all sides by Indian reservations, occupied by different tribes of Indians, except on the north, and there we find the Cherokee lands, which, by the express term of the treaty of July 19, 1866, are to be sold and occupied by friendly Indians? Then, again, we find, by a treaty made with that tribe, February 27, 1867, the United States settled, upon a tract 30 miles square of this identical land conveyed by the Seminole tribe, the Pottawatomie tribe of Indians. Then, again, upon a part of this 30-mile tract, by an act of congress of May 23, 1872, the Absentee Shawnees have been set- tled ; so that now there remains of this whole Seminole cession only about 2O odd townships which is not at this time actually occupied by Indians. Again, by executive order of the president of Augiist ��� �