The case not being definitely decided, a bill was brought before congress in 1874 for the relief of the catholic mission of St James, and on being referred to the committee on private land claims, the chairman reported that it was the opinion of the committee that the mission was entitled to 640 acres under the act of August 14, 1848, and recommended the passage of the bill, with an amendment saving to the United States the right to remove from the premises any property, buildings, or other improvements it might have upon that portion of the claim covered by the military reservation.[1] But the bill did not pass; and in 1875, a similar bill being under advisement by the committee on private land claims, the secretary of war addressed a letter to the committee, in which he said that the military reservation was valued at a million dollars, and that the claim of the St James mission covered the whole of it; and that the war department had always held that the religious establishment of the claimants was not a missionary station among Indian tribes on the 14th of August 1848, and that the occupancy of the lands in question at that date was not such as the act of congress required. The secretary recommended that the matter go before a court and jury for final adjustment, on the passage of an act providing for the settlement of this and similar claims.[2]
Again in 1876, a bill being before congress whose object was to cause a patent to be issued to the St James mission, the committee on private land claims
- ↑ U. S. H. Rept., 630, 43d cong. 1st sess., 1873–4.
- ↑ U. S. H. Ex. Doc., 117, 43d cong. 2d sess.
said that the United States had title to the lands, yet it could not dispose of them absolutely in præsenti, so that the grantee could demand immediate possession. Granted, so far as the Hudson's Bay Company was upon these lands with its possessory rights, those rights must be respected. But how does this admission derogate from the right to grant such title as the United States then had, which was the proprietary right, encumbered only by a temporary right of possession, for limited and special purpose?' The arguments and evidence in this case are published in a pamphlet called Claim of the St James Mission, Vancouver, W. T., to 640 acres of Land, from which the above is quoted.
