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United States. Office of Indian Affairs / Annual report of the Commissioner of Indian Affairs, for the year 1856
([1856])
Report of the Commissioner of Indian Affairs, pp. [3]-24
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Page 19
COMMISSIONER OF INDIAN AFFAIRS. initiated, if not established, in regard to such cases. Other cases, however, occur, where trusts arise upon cash deposited in the treasury for the payment of matured stock, the avails of land sales, and by accumulations of interest on stocks now held, which are not imme- diately necessary in the performance of treaty stipulations. These accumulations are now considerable; and after the sales of the Dela- ware and other trust lands in Kansas Trritory, they will be very largely increased; in view of which, it is suggested that the law of 1841 ought to be repealed, and a general enactment obtained from Congress, authorizing all sums of money arising from trusts, and held by the Secretary of the Interior, to be passed into the treasury at the end of each fiscal half year, by transfer warrants, and pledging the United States thereafter to pay five per centum per annum for the benefit of the Indian tribe entitled thereto. Such a measure would simplify the business of this department and that of the treasury, re- duce gradually the stocks on hand as they mature, and be an act of justice to the Indians denied to them under existing laws. Owing to the imperfection of records, the different modes in which their names are written, the difficulty of properly identifying applicants, and other causes, the progress in making and deciding the aplications for bounty-land warrants for Indians has been slow. nder the regulations adopted, there have been three thousand two hundred and seventy-three Indian applications for bounty land: of which three have been decided adversely at the Pension Office ; two thousand eight hundred and twenty-eight are in course of examina- tion or suspended, and four hundred and forty-three warrants have been granted and sent to this office for delivery to the proper parties. Among the accompanying documents will be found the forms pre- scribed for the sale and transfer of these warrants, by the Indian holders, which, it is hoped, will amply protect them from imposition or fraud. Twenty-six quarter sections of Choctaw orphan land, in Mississippi, which had reverted for non-payment, have been re-valued and sold ; and thirty-four sections of Creek reserves, in Alabama, have also been re-valued and sold, and the prices obtained in both cases are believed to be the fair cash value of the lands. The construction of the road from Fort Ridgely, in Minnesota, to the South Pass of the Rocky mountains, in Nebraska Territory, for which an appropriation of $50,000 was made on the 22d of July last, having been assigned by you to this bureau, instructions were issued on the 18th day of September last to Win. H. Noble, esq., who was appointed superintendent. He is now in the field in the discharge of his duties. His instructions forbid him to anticipate any further appropriations for this road, and require that he proceed to lay out and construct such an emigrant wagon road between the points referred to as a judicious and economical expenditure of the money will authorize. A map of the Indian territories within the United States, provided for by the act of August 18,1856, is in the course of construction, and will be completed without any unnecessary delay. 19
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