CHITIMACHA TRIBE OF LA. v. Harry L. Laws Co., Inc., Civ. A. No. 770772.

• Citation: 490 F. Supp. 164
• Decision Date: 24 April 1980
• Docket Number: Civ. A. No. 770772.
• Parties: The CHITIMACHA TRIBE OF LOUISIANA et al. v. HARRY L. LAWS COMPANY, INC., et al.
• Court: United States District Courts. 5th Circuit. United States District Courts. 5th Circuit. Western District of Louisiana

490 F. Supp. 164

The CHITIMACHA TRIBE OF LOUISIANA et al. v. HARRY L. LAWS COMPANY, INC., et al.

Civ. A. No. 770772.

United States District Court, W. D. Louisiana, Lafayette-Opelousas Division.

April 24, 1980.

Donald Juneau, New Orleans Legal Assistance Corp., New Orleans, La., for Tunica Tribe.

Blanchard, Walker, O'Quin & Roberts, Robert Roberts, III, Shreveport, La., and Butler, Binion, Rice, Cook & Knapp, Andrew Wooley and Louis Paine, Houston, Tex., for P & O Iol Corp.

Fontenot, Andrus & Preis, Vance R. Andrus, Lafayette, La., for Andrea R. Hertel.

Timothy W. Cerniglia, New Orleans, La., for Texaco Inc.

Milling, Benson, Woodward, Hillyer, Pierson & Miller, M. Hampton Carver, New Orleans, La., for Chevron Oil.

Charles D. Marshall, Jr., New Orleans, La., for La. Land and Exploration.

Cooper, Sonnier, Ortego, Hebert & Woodruff, Silas B. Cooper, Jr., Abbeville, La., for Lastarmco, Inc.

Doyle, Smith & Doyle, Roger H. Doyle, New Orleans, La., for Union Oil Co. of California.

Plauche, Hartley, Lapeyre & Ottinger, Patrick S. Ottinger, Lafayette, La., for Eason Oil.

Harry Case Stansbury and John C. Hose, and Guy J. D'Antonio, II, New Orleans, La., Bauer, Darnall, McNulty & Boudreaux, Michael J. McNulty, Jr., and Newman Trowbridge, Jr., Franklin, La., for E. J. Robicheaux, Vincent J. St. Blanc, Jr., Stephanie B. Dinkins, H. H. Dinkins, Jr., Stephanie Dinkins, Gertrude O. Dinkins and Ladd O. Dinkins.

Liskow & Lewis, George H. Robinson, Jr., Lafayette, La., and Liskow & Lewis, Gene W. Lafitte, New Orleans, La., for Atlantic, Edgewater and Amoco.

George Bailey, Lafayette, La., for Cities Service.

J. William Vaudry, Jr., and Moise W. Dennery, McCloskey, Dennery, Page & Hennesy, New Orleans, La., for Adeline Sugar Factory Co., Ltd., Ray A. Dupuy, Ethel Giles Chance, Beverly Marie Dupuy Comeaux, Robert F. Giles and Fabiola May Dupuy Phenis.

William S. Strain, Gordon, Arata, McCollam & Watters, New Orleans, La., for Tenneco Oil Co.

Robert C. Smith, New Orleans, La., for Amoco Production Co.

Onebane, Donohoe, Bernard, Torian, Diaz, McNamara & Abell, Lawrence E. Donohoe and E. Randall Lolley, Lafayette, La., Alex Allain, Jeanerette, La., for Rodney J. Banta and Elizabeth B. McGee Le.

Polack, Rosenberg, Rittenberg & Endom, Franklin V. Endom, Jr., New Orleans, La., for Michane P. Burns.

RULING ON MOTION

W. EUGENE DAVIS, District Judge.

Plaintiff, the Chitimacha Tribe of Louisiana, (Chitimacha Tribe) claims ownership of a large tract of land in St. Mary Parish, Louisiana. Plaintiffs allege that the lands they claim were part of the Indian Tribe's aboriginal territory and that the deeds by which the tribe sold the lands to defendants' ancestors in title were nullities.

UNCONTESTED FACTS

No material issue of fact is raised as to the following:

1) The Chitimacha Tribe purported to transfer to defendants' ancestors in title the land involved in this litigation as follows:

a) To Phillip Verret by deed dated September 10, 1794.

b) To Frederick Pellerin by deed dated October 2, 1794.

c) To Marie Joseph by deed dated June 22, 1799.

(Defendants' three ancestors in title may sometimes be referred to as "Verret et al.")

2) Following the Louisiana Purchase in 1803, Verret et al. sought United States recognition of their title by making claim to the land according to procedures set forth in acts of congress (Louisiana Land Claims Acts). Favorable reports were made on these claims by the commission authorized by Congress to adjudicate the claims, and the claims of Verret et al. were confirmed by the Congress in 1816.

ISSUE PRESENTED

Plaintiffs contend, for various reasons, that the transfers executed by the tribe in favor of Verret et al. were a nullity. Plaintiffs' primary claim is that the transfers violated the terms of the Indian Nonintercourse Act which provided:

That no sale of land made by any Indians, or any nation or tribe of Indians within the United States, shall be valid to any person or persons, or to any state, whether having the right of pre-emption to such lands or not, unless the same shall be made and duly executed at some public treaty, held under the authority of the United States.

Act of July 22, 1790, 1 Stat. 317.

Among the defenses raised by the motions for summary judgment are: 1) Prior to the United States' sovereignty over Louisiana, all of the lands involved in this suit were validly transferred pursuant to Spanish law to Verret et al., and consequently the Indian Nonintercourse Act, a statute of the United States, has no application to those transfers; 2) after its acquisition of Louisiana, the United States approved and confirmed each of the titles acquired by Verret et al. and even if the Indian Nonintercourse Act is deemed applicable, it cannot have the effect of invalidating defendants' title. More particularly, defendants urge that under the Louisiana Land Claims Acts the Congress established the exclusive procedure for claiming title to land within the Louisiana Purchase and precluded all other claims, including plaintiffs' claims asserted in this action.

DISCUSSION

I conclude that plaintiffs' title to the land claimed in this suit has been extinguished and plaintiffs are barred from asserting these claims under the preclusive provisions of the Louisiana Land Claims Acts. On this basis alone, the defendants' motions for summary judgment are granted, making it unnecessary to consider any other basis for the motions urged on us by defendants.

Because of the changes of sovereignty between France and Spain prior to 1803, the different land acquisition policies of those two nations and the incomplete state of the French and Spanish land records, considerable confusion reigned with respect to land ownership at the inception of United States sovereignty over this territory. See Coles, The Confirmation of Foreign Land Titles in Louisiana, 38 La. Historical Quarterly 1 (1955). As a consequence, the Congress enacted the Louisiana Land Claims Acts.¹

These acts generally required all private claimants to register a notice of their claim with the Register of the Land Office and provided for a board of land commissioners to review, analyze and report upon the claims filed. The 1807 Act (which amended and supplemented the 1805 and 1806 Acts) expanded the functions and powers of the land commissioners by providing "that the commissioners . . . shall have full powers to decide according to the laws and established usages and customs of the French and Spanish Governments, upon all claims to lands within their respective districts, . . . which decision of the commissioners when in favour of the claimant shall be final, against the United States, any act of Congress to the contrary notwithstanding."

Beginning with the 1805 Act, Congress also established a time limitation for filing notice of claims:

And if such person shall neglect to deliver such notice in writing of his claim, together with a plat as aforesaid, or cause to be recorded such written evidence of the same, all his right, so far as the same is derived from the two first sections of this act, shall become void, and forever thereafter be barred; . . ..

The 1807 Act extended the time for filing notice of claims, but also contained peremptive language:

But the rights of such persons as shall neglect so doing filing notice of claim within the time limited by this act, shall, so far as they are derived from or founded on any act of Congress, ever after be barred and become void, and the evidences of their claims never after admitted as evidence in any court of law or equity whatever.

Subsequent enactments extended the time for filing notices, but in each instance Congress provided (often in identical terms) that untimely claims would be void and any evidence of them deemed inadmissible in courts of the United States.²

In Barker v. Harvey, 181 U.S. 481, 21 S.Ct. 690, 45 L.Ed. 963 (1901), the Supreme Court was called on to interpret a similar provision of the California Private Land Claims Act.³ Plaintiffs sued to quiet title to land held under a patent confirming grants made by the Mexican government to the plaintiffs' ancestor in title. The defendants, Mission Indians, contended that plaintiffs' title was subject to their right of permanent occupancy which they claimed had been recognized by the government of Mexico long before the existence of the grants relied on by the plaintiffs. The Court had no difficulty in concluding that the Indian claims were abandoned when they were not presented to the commission for consideration within the time allowed by the act.

A similar result was reached in United States v. Title Insurance & Trust Co., 265 U.S. 472, 44 S.Ct. 621, 68 L.Ed. 1110 (1924). In that case, the United States brought suit on behalf of the Mission Indians to confirm in them a perpetual right of occupancy, use and enjoyment in certain property held by the defendants under a government patent which confirmed a Mexican land grant. The Court followed Barker's interpretation of the California Act and held that the Indians' claim was barred because it had not been presented to the commission and that full title, unencumbered by any rights of the Indians, had passed to the defendants.

The plaintiffs seek to distinguish these decisions on two grounds. First, they contend that the statutes in question bear more similarity to those interpreted in United States v. Santa Fe Pacific Railroad Co., 314 U.S. 339, 62 S.Ct. 248, 86 L.Ed. 260 (1941) than to the California Act. Their second argument is that the absence of a specific provision extinguishing Indian claims in the acts covering Louisiana prevents the loss of their rights by peremption.

In Santa Fe, suit was brought by the United States on behalf of the Walapai tribe to enjoin the defendant railroad from interfering with the tribe's possession and enjoyment of property in Northwest Arizona. The government contended that its grant of the property to the railroad was...