United States v. McCandless
| Decision Date | 18 March 1927 |
| Docket Number | No. M-54.,M-54. |
| Citation | 18 F.2d 282 |
| Parties | UNITED STATES ex rel. DIABO v. McCANDLESS. |
| Court | U.S. District Court — Western District of Pennsylvania |
Adrian Bonnelly and William N. Nitzberg, both of Philadelphia, Pa., for relator.
George W. Coles, U. S. Atty., of Philadelphia, Pa., for defendant.
The question to be ruled is one of law, and turns upon the rights of those known to us as American Indians.
Finding.
The conclusion we have reached is that the relator has the right to be discharged from custody upon giving the bond herein required of him.
Discussion.
We may be taking a too broad view of the question raised, and because of this an inadequate one. The cause presents to us, however, a different question from that discussed. The Indians have always been recognized by us as a nation and as a race independent of our governmental control in the ordinary sense of that phrase. In this sense they are an alien people, but at the same time we have likewise, from our point of view, felt toward them the relation of wardship. Territorially as a nation they have always been an imperium in imperio, although we have from time to time negotiated treaties with them for the surrender to us of the exclusive occupancy of described parts of what they claimed to be their territory, but which was otherwise always regarded by us as our territory. In like manner, we have from time to time allotted territory to them, and protected them in its occupancy. This practice has given us the word "reservations." Divisions of the Indian race into nations and tribes have always been recognized. This had more than a merely ethnological significance. Maps and other publications of official authority are in existence, showing the territorial distribution of the Indians and tribal divisions and land occupancy. The areas indicated could never be more than approximate, as the sites of the habitats of the different tribes were ever in a state of shift.
At the time the boundary line between the United States and the now Dominion of Canada was fixed and located by agreement with Great Britain, the line was run in large part through what may be termed Indian territory in the sense of lands, the right of occupancy of which was recognized by both the contracting parties to be in the Indians. The boundary line to establish the respective territory of the United States and of Great Britain was clearly not intended to, and just as clearly did not, affect the Indians. It made no...
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