Campbell v. Wadsworth

• Decision Date: 16 December 1918
• Docket Number: No. 72,72
• Parties: CAMPBELL v. WADSWORTH et al
• Court: U.S. Supreme Court

248 U.S. 169

39 S.Ct. 63

63 L.Ed. 192

CAMPBELL

v WADSWORTH et al.

No. 72.

Argued and Submitted Nov. 21, 1918.

Decided Dec. 16, 1918.

Mr. C. Dale Wolfe, of Wewoka, Okl., for plaintiff in error.

Mr. Samuel Herrick, of Washington, D. C., for defendants in error.

Mr. Justice CLARKE delivered the opinion of the Court.

The defendants in error brought suit to quiet title to the lands in controversy in this case, the facts involved being agreed upon as follows:

Louis Cox, whose name appears in the final rolls of the Seminole Tribe of Indians, died intestate, on July 4, 1901, and left surviving him the defendants in error, Annie Cox, his widow, now Annie Wadsworth, and two daughters, Maggie Cox, now Maggie Beamore, and Nancy Cox, now Nancy Alexander. These three women were all duly enrolled on the Creek tribal roll in 1890, and in July, 1901, after the death of Cox, upon an application made in May, 1901, they were enrolled as citizens of the Creek Nation by the Commission to the Five Civilized Tribes, but neither of the three appears on the Seminole rolls. Certified copies of the 'final' Seminole roll bearing the name of Louis Cox and of the Creek roll bearing the names of his wife and daughters are in the record. On the former is the notation 'Wife and family Creeks,' and in the latter Louis Cox is described as an enrolled Seminole.

No allotment of land had been made to Cox at the time of his death, but subsequently the land in controversy was allotted by the United States as his distributive share of the Seminole tribal lands.

The plaintiff in error claims title through one Lucy Wildcat, the only surviving relative of Cox whose name apears on the approved Seminole roll. The widow and daughters claim as heirs of Louis Cox.

The decision of the case depends upon the application to the facts thus stated of the second paragraph of the agreement between the government of the United States and the Seminole Tribe of Indians, dated October 7, 1899, and ratified by Act of Congress June 2, 1900 (31 Stat. 250, c. 610), the essential parts of which are as follows:

'First. That the Commission to the Five Civilized Tribes, in making the rolls of Seminole citizens, pursuant to the Act of Congress approved June twenty-eighth, eighteen hundred and ninety-eight, shall place on said rolls the names of all children born to Seminole citizens up to and including the thirty-first day of December, eighteen hundred and ninety-nine, and the names of all Seminole citizens then living; and the rolls so made, when approved by the Secretary of the Interior, as provided by said Act of Congress, shall constitute the final rolls of Seminole citizens, upon which the allotment of lands and distribution of money and other property belonging to the Seminole Indians shall be made, and to no other persons.

'Second. If any member of the Seminole tribe of Indians shall die after the thirty-first day of December, eighteen hundred and ninety-nine, the lands, money, and other property to which he would be entitled if living, shall descend to his heirs who are Seminole citizens, according to the laws of descent and distribution of the state of Arkansas, and be allotted and distributed to them accordingly: Provided, that in all cases where such property would descend to the parents under said laws the same shall first go to the mother instead of the father, and then to the brothers and sisters, and their heirs, instead of the father.'

Plainly the facts agreed upon bring the case within the scope of the second paragraph thus quoted, and whether Lucy Wildcat, the only surviving Seminole relative of the deceased, or the wife and daughters of Cox, inherited the land in controversy depends upon the effect to be given to the phrase, 'shall descend to his heirs who are Seminole Indians.'

The Supreme Court of Oklahoma seemingly had little difficulty in concluding that this expression excluded 'heirs' who were not Seminoles and it adopted unanimously as its own the opinion by the Commission (154 Pac. 60), which found in favor of the plaintiff in error, containing the following:

'The act under consideration says that such property 'shall descend to his heirs who are Seminole citizens.' Who are Seminole citizens as here designated? Section 1 of the act set out above provides for the enrollment of the Seminole citizens and says that in making out this roll the names of all citizens living on the 31st day of December, 1889, and all the children born to Seminole citizens up to that date, shall constitute the final rolls of Seminole citizens. In section 21 of the Original Curtis Act (Act Cong. June 28, 1898, c. 517, 30 Stat. 502), which provided for the enrollment of the citizens of the Five Civilized Tribes, which included the Seminole Nation, there is a provision which reads as follows:

"The rolls so made, when approved by the Secretary of the Interior, shall be final, and the persons whose names are found thereon, with their descendants thereafter born to them, with such persons as may intermarry according to the tribal laws, shall alone constitute the saveral tribes which they represent.'

'From the reading of these two sections last above set out it plainly appears that neither the widow of decedent, Louis Cox, nor their two children, can be denominated 'Seminole citizens.' The widow undoubtedly is not so included because she is of the Creek blood and a citizen of that tribe, and the two children are excluded because they were born before December 31, 1899, and were not enrolled as Seminole citizens, and thus do not come within the provisions defining Seminole citizens.'

But upon a rehearing of the case the court 'withdrew' its former opinion and held that Congress intended that the words 'Seminole citizens' in the second paragraph of the act should have a more elastic meaning than was in terms given to them in the first paragraph and, by interpreting them so as to include the wife and daughters of the deceased, it found the title to the lands to be in the latter subject to the dower estate of the former.

This judgment, being within the provisions of section 2 of the Act approved September 6, 1916 (39 Stat. 726, c. 448), amending section 237 of the Judicial Code (Act March 3, 1911, c. 231, 36 Stat. 1156 [Comp. St. 1916, § 1214]), is properly before us for review on writ of error.

The first paragraph of the argeement, which we have quoted, prescribes the persons whose names shall go upon the Seminole roll and it declares that the rolls os made, when approved by the Secretary of the Interior, 'shall constitute the final rolls' of 'Seminole citizens' and that to these 'and to no other persons' shall allotment of property be made. This definition of 'Seminole citizens' is followed in the second paragraph with the provision that the property of an intestate, such as we have in this case, shall descend to his heirs who are 'Seminole citizens.'

There is nothing in the act to indicate an intention on the part of Congress or of the tribe that the words, 'Seminole citizens,' as used in the second, shall have any other meaning than that specifically given to them in the first paragraph but, on the contrary, both the natural and the legal inference from their being used in such juxtaposition is that the same meaning shall be given them and that if a different or more comprehensive meaning had been intended it would have been expressed.

But there are other cogent...