Arenas v. United States 8212 1944, 463

• Decision Date: 22 May 1944
• Docket Number: No. 463,463
• Citation: 322 U.S. 419,88 L.Ed. 1363,64 S.Ct. 1090
• Parties: ARENAS v. UNITED STATES. Argued March 6—7, 1944
• Court: U.S. Supreme Court

322 U.S. 419

64 S.Ct. 1090

88 L.Ed. 1363

ARENAS

v UNITED STATES.

No. 463.

Argued March 6—7, 1944.

Decided May 22, 1944.

Messrs. John W. Preston and Oliver O. Clark, both of Los Angeles, Cal., for petitioner.

Mr. Norman MacDonald, of Washington, D.C., for respondent.

Mr. Justice JACKSON delivered the opinion of the Court.

The petitioner Arenas is a full-blood Mission Indian, regularly enrolled in the Agua Caliente or Palm Springs Band. He sued in the United States District Court to be awarded a trust patent to certain lands on the Palm Springs Reservation The Government was granted a summary judgment of dismissal on affidavits and on the record of the St. Marie litigation on like claims by similarly situated Indians.¹ No findings have been made in this case by the District Court. The Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed,² chiefly in reliance upon its previous decision in the St. Marie case, and we granted certiorari.³

For a long period Congress pursued the policy of imposing, as rapidly as possible, our system of individual land tenure on the Indian. To this end tribal or com- munal land holdings of the Indians were superseded by allotment to individuals, who were protected against improvidence by restraints on alienation.⁴ The Mission Indians had deserved well and had fared badly⁵ and Congress passed the Mission Indian Act of Jan. 12, 1891⁶ for their particular redress.

The first three sections of this Act set up a commission to settle these several bands on suitable reservations and directed that appropriate patents issue. The United States was to hold the titles in trust, however, for twenty-five years and then was to convey to the tribes any portions not previously patented in severalty to members. Several reservations were set apart, including one at Palm Springs, with which this and the St. Marie case were concerned.

The Act also provided in § 4 that whenever in the opinion of the Secretary of the Interior any of the Indians should 'be so advanced in civilization as to be capable of owning and managing land in severalty, the Secretary of the Interior may cause allotments to be made to such Indians, out of the land of such reservation' and it specified the acreage to be allotted to each. Section 5 provided that on approval of the allotments the Secretary should cause patents to issue in the name of the allottees. For twenty-five years the lands were to remain in trust for their benefit and then were to be conveyed in fee free of the trust.⁷

Nevertheless, little was done toward allotment in severalty to Mission Indians for nearly twenty-five years. One reason, we father, was that the Act authorized allotment on a more liberal basis than available lands would permit, although there may have been other reasons. In 1916, however, Secretary Lane called the neglect to the attention of Congress and asked that he be authorized to make allotments in quantities governed by the General Allotment Act of 1887, as amended by section 17 of the Act of June 25, 1910, 36 Stat. 859, instead of in those set out in the Mission Indian Act of 1891. Thereupon Congress passed the Act of March 2, 1917⁸ by which it 'authorized and directed' the Secretary to proceed under the Act of 1910.

The Secretary on June 7, 1921 appointed Harry E. Wadsworth as Special Allotting Agent at Large for the Mission Indian Reservations of California and instructed him to prepare schedules of selections for allotments thereon. In 1923, Wadsworth filed a schedule showing selections on the Palm Springs Reservation for fifty members of the Band. The Secretary expressly disapproved this schedule. Complaint had come from the Indians, many of whom did not want allotments and had not made the selections listed in their names. When they failed to choose, the allotment agent had made a choice for them. The Secretary instructed Wadsworth to prepare a new schedule listing only selections voluntarily made and to leave off those who did not desire allotments. In 1927, the Department received from Wadsworth a new schedule showing voluntary selections for twenty-four members of the Palm Springs Band.

Each Indian for whom a selection was listed received from Wadsworth a certificate of selection for allotment. Each was stamped 'Not valid unless approved by the Secretary of the Interior.'

On October 26, 1923, Wadsworth asked the Indian Department for instructions, reciting, 'Allotments being completed and certificates issued. Many allottees anxious to immediately occupy their selections and prepare things for early crops instead waiting for receipt of patents.' On the same day he received reply, 'No objection to Indians preparing their respective allotment selections for crops if properly listed on schedule.' Wadsworth also wrote to one, at least, of the allottees in the St. Marie case saying among other things, 'It is difficult to tell exactly when you may except these patents from Washington but I believe they should be here within 6 weeks or so. They will come to the superintendent in Riverside, who will notify you that they are there and ready for delivery to you. In the meantime, the Commissioner of Indian Affairs in Washington authorizes me to say to you that from this date you are entitled to enter upon and take possession of these allotments, and these certificates will be your evidence of such authority until the trust patents are received by you.'

Wadsworth filed the schedule with the Department of the Interior. He attached a certificate, among other things reciting 'that the allotments shown hereon were made in accordance with the provisions of the act of Congress of February 8, 1887 as amended by the Act of June 25, 1910 and supplemented by the Act of March 2, 1917.' The General Land Office recommended that the schedule be approved, with exceptions that appear to have no bearing on the case before us.

But the allotments appear never to have been approved by the Secretary. He refuses to issue patents to which these Indians claim to be entitled. The Government's moving papers contain an affidavit by counsel declaring that the Secretary disapproved the allotments. But it gives no reason, and no order or statement of disapproval by the Secretary is in the record. The Government filed no pleading averring reasons for disapproval or, if disapproval was formal, setting forth the document. On the contrary, counsel seems to have taken the position that as matter of law the Secretary's reasons and the form of his disapproval were not relevant to any question the Court is empowered to decide.

The power of the Secretary so to refuse patents and the powerlessness of the courts to review the refusal are here maintained on these contentions: 'It rests in the complete discretion of the Secretary of the Interior whether or not allotments shall be made on the Palm Spring Reservation. Sections 4 and 5 of the Act of January 12, 1891 contemplate three steps in the making of allotments on that reservation: (1) an opinion by the Secretary as to the capacity of the Indians to receive allotments; (2) a method or procedure for making such allotments; and (3) approval of the allotments by the Secretary. Each of these steps is under the control and rests in the discretion of the Secretary.' Upon these grounds the trial court and the Circuit Court of Appeals held that the plaintiffs in the St. Marie cases were not entitled to patents and that this petitioner is not entitled to go to trial.

I.

The Secretary's Discretion in Determining the Capacity of the Indians to Receive Allotments.

The Act of 1891 provides that 'whenever any of the Indians residing upon any reservation patented under the provisions of this act shall, in the opinion of the Secretary of the Interior, be so advanced in civilization as to be capable of owning and managing land in severalty, the Secretary of the Interior may cause allotments to be made to such Indians.' (Emphasis supplied.) This undoubtedly conferred a very considerable discretion upon the Secretary.

The Act of 1917, however, drops the language of discretion and directs the Secretary to cause allotments to be made to the Indians on the Mission reservations.⁹ The Act was prepared by the Secretary¹⁰ and if it was intended to perpetuate his discretion as to whether the allotment policy was to be applied to these Indians at all, it might easily have so provided. Both the Secretary and Congress appears to have settled that point. The Communication of the Secretary to the Chairman of the Senate Committee on Indian Affairs indicates no reservations about the Secretary's view that the Indians were qualified and that the Department should carry out the allotment policy. It points out certain evils and inequalities among the Indians under the tribal system of land holdings and says, 'This is a condition that cannot be cured entirely until the lands have been allotted in severalty.' And again it says, 'The Department believes that the present conditions, while much better than they were some years ago, would be rapidly improved by allotment in severalty, provided authority to pro rate the available land is given.'

Following passage of the Act the Secretary set about executing its directions. Wadsworth was appointed General Allotment Agent and was sent to the Indians with instructions to permit them to select their own allotments. When he selected for those who did not choose for themselves, his schedule was disapproved, and only for that reason. He was returned to the task of compiling voluntary selections for those who desired allotments, it being thought that if that were done those who objected 'would soon fall in line and request that they too be given their proportionate share of the allottable areas.'¹¹ There is no denial that Wadsworth was authorized to hold out to the Indians that their patents would be received in a few weeks and that meanwhile, if not already living on their selected lands, they might enter into possession.

To assume...