Baker v. McCarthy
| Decision Date | 20 February 1920 |
| Docket Number | 21,496 |
| Citation | 176 N.W. 643,145 Minn. 167 |
| Parties | C. A. BAKER AND OTHERS v. J. K. McCARTHY |
| Court | Minnesota Supreme Court |
Action in ejectment in the district court for Becker county to recover possession of certain land. The case was tried before Parsons, J., who made findings and dismissed the action. From the judgment dismissing the action, entered pursuant to the findings, plaintiffs appealed. Reversed.
Indian -- jurisdiction of probate court over their estates since Clapp amendment.
The Clapp amendment of June 21, 1906, as amended March 1, 1907 emancipated adult mixed-blood Indian allottees from Federal guardianship, and by implication gave to the probate courts of this state jurisdiction to administer the estates and determine the heirs of such mixed-blood allottees, whether death occurred before or after the passage of the amendments. Holmes v. Praun, 130 Minn. 487, distinguished.
R. J Powell, for appellants.
Johnston & Carman, for respondent.
Ejectment to recover land in Becker county, formerly in the White Earth Indian Reservation. Before 1897, Alexander Roy, an adult mixed-blood Indian, made application to have this land allotted to him. The application was approved by the secretary of the interior, and in 1902 there was issued a so-called trust patent in the name of Alexander Roy.
Roy died in November, 1897. In 1914, the probate court of Becker county made a decree, determining the heirs of Roy, and assigning this land to them. Plaintiffs claim by purchase from these heirs. If the probate court had jurisdiction over the estate of Roy, plaintiff's title is good. If not, his title fails. The trial court determined the case adversely to plaintiff and dismissed the action.
Holmes v. Praun, 130 Minn. 487, 153 N.W. 951, involved the question whether a state probate court had jurisdiction to determine heirship of a minor Indian. It was held, following McKay v. Kalyton, 204 U.S. 458, 27 S.Ct. 346, 51 L.Ed. 566, that the court had no jurisdiction, but that the sole repository of jurisdiction in such a case was the secretary of the interior.
Nothing was decided as to jurisdiction in case of adult mixed-bloods. Nothing of the kind was before the court for decision. Whether the rule would be the same or different in such a case was neither considered nor decided. There was no occasion to do either.
Since the decision of Holmes v. Praun, the secretary of the interior has ruled that in the case of adult mixed-bloods, the interior department has no jurisdiction to determine heirship. In re Estate of Robert Fairbanks, and In re Estate of Catherine Fairbanks, October 19, 1918.
This ruling follows the opinion of the attorney general, to the effect that "where the title has passed to an adult mixed-blood Indian, now dead, or to the heirs of a deceased adult mixed-blood, all questions of the title by inheritance are vested in the proper state courts having jurisdiction of the subject matter and the parties under state laws." Opinion F. J. Kearful, Assistant Attorney General to Secretary of the Interior, December 24, 1917.
The basis of this opinion was that the Clapp amendment of June 21, 1906 (34 St. 353), as amended by the Clapp amendment of March 1, 1907 (34 St. 1015), removing all restrictions as to sale, encumbrance or taxation, from allotments within the White Earth Reservation "heretofore or hereafter held by adult mixed-blood Indians," and declaring that the trust deeds, "heretofore or hereafter executed by the Department for such allotments," shall pass the title in fee-simple, fully "emancipated" the adult mixed-blood Indians, if living, and their heirs and estate, if the allottees were then dead, from the Federal guardianship and the consequent jurisdiction of the interior department, with the result that jurisdiction vests in the state courts.
This position was a reversal of the position previously taken by the secretary of the interior, and a reversal of the opinion previously expressed by the attorney general, on which the former position of the secretary of the interior was based. In a report of the secretary of the interior, transmitted to the House Committee on Indian affairs in August, 1916, upon a bill then pending in Congress, which was intended to give jurisdiction in such cases to the probate courts of this state, there appears the opinion of the attorney general that all proceedings that have been had in the probate courts of Minnesota, to determine...
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