These suits were brought in the District Court for the Western District of Washington to establish and enforce asserted rights to allotments, each of 80 acres, in the Quinaielt Indian Reservation in the southwestern part of that State. Authority for bringing the suits is found in the statute providing that any person who is 'in whole or in part of Indian blood or descent' and claims to be entitled to an allotment of land under any law of Congress may prosecute a suit against the United States to determine and give effect to such right. The suits were heard together in the District Court, where decrees were given for the plaintiffs, and again in the Circuit Court of Appeals, where those decrees were reversed. The cases are here on certiorari. 282 U.S. 818, 51 S.C.t. 23, 75 L. Ed. -.
The plaintiffs are all of Indian blood and descent, but none is a full-blood Indian. Some are members of the Chehalis, Chinook and Cowlitz Tribes, and the question is presented whether these tribes are among those whose members are entitled to allotments from lands within the Quinaielt Reservation. Many do not personally reside on the reservation, and we are asked to decide whether this defeats their claims. Some are the issue, either children or grandchildren, of a marriage between an Indian woman and a white man, and whether this is an obstacle to allowing their claims is a further question.
In 1855 the Quinaielt, Quillehute (also called Quileute), Chehalis, Chinook and Cowlitz Indians were neighboring tribes in the southwesterly section of what is now the State of Washington. They were all known as 'fisheating Indians' and lived in small villages adjacent to the Pacific Coast and the lower reaches of the Columbia River. The Quits and Ozettes were also fish-eating tribes living in coast villages a little north of the others, the Ozettes being farther north than the Quits.
During the early part of 1855 negotiations were had between a representative of the United States and representatives of the Quinaielt, Quillehute, Chehalis, Chinook, Cowlitz and Quit Tribes looking towards a cession by these tribes of much territory and their consolidation within a single reservation. These negotiations failed of their full purpose, but resulted in a treaty between the United States and the Quinaielts and Quillehutes which was signed on July 1, 1855, and January 25, 1856. By this treaty the Quinaielts and Quillehutes ceded a large district to the United States, and the latter engaged to reserve for their use and occupancy a tract 'sufficient for their wants,' to which when established they were to remove. There were also provisions in the treaty securing to the Indians the right of taking fish 'at all usual and accustomed grounds and stations,' in common with all citizens of that section, and of erecting temporary houses to be used in that connection; authorizing the President, at his discretion, to survey the whole or any part of the reserved lands and assign the same to such individuals or families 'as are willing to avail themselves of the privilege and will locate on the same as a permanent home'; and consenting that the President might 'consolidate' the Quinaielts and Quillehutes and 'other friendly tribes,' whenever in his opinion the public interest and the welfare of the Indians would be promoted b it.
Under the treaty a reservation of about 10,000 acres at the mouth of the Quinaielt River was provisionally selected and its boundaries surveyed. Some years later the local superintendent reported that the reservation, by reason of being small and containing but a small amount of agricultural and pasture lands, had proved unattractive to the Indians; that the Chehalis, Chinook and other coastal tribes in southwestern Washington, like the Quinaielts and Quillehutes, who were parties to the treaty, were all 'emphatically fish-eaters,' drawing their subsistence almost wholly from the water, and that all of these fish-eating tribes should be collected on a single reservation, including suitable fisheries. To that end he recommended that the existing reservation be greatly enlarged and designated the territory which he believed should be included in it. This recommendation led to an order of November 4, 1873, by the President, the material parts of which are as follows: