Dauterive v. United States

• Decision Date: 01 October 1879
• Citation: 25 L.Ed. 869,101 U.S. 700
• Parties: DAUTERIVE v. UNITED STATES
• Court: U.S. Supreme Court

101 U.S. 700

101 U.S. 700

25 L.Ed. 869

DAUTERIVE v. UNITED STATES.

October Term, 1879

APPEAL from the District Court of the United States for the District of Louisiana.

The facts are stated in the opinion of the court.

Mr. Edward Janin for the appellants.

The Solicitor-General, contra.

MR. JUSTICE CLIFFORD delivered the opinion of the court.

Claimants to land lying within the States of Florida, Louisiana, or Missouri, by virtue of any grant, concession, order of survey, permission to settle, or other written evidence of title bearing date prior to the cession of the territory out of which those States were formed, may make application to certain commissioners for the confirmation of their title, or they may at their option proceed by petition in the District Court within whose jurisdiction the lands are situated. 12 Stat. 85.

Either party aggrieved by the decree in the case may appeal directly to the Supreme Court as of right, neither affidavit or security being required of the claimant, other than for costs. Pursuant to that authority the appellants presented their petition to the District Court of the District for Louisiana, asking for the confirmation of their title to the same, except as to such parts thereof as have been granted by the U ited States or confirmed to other parties, as to which they pray that they may be adjudged to be entitled to indemnity in certificates of location to the same extent of land.

Sufficient appears to show that the same claim was presented to the same District Court twenty years earlier, and that on appeal to the Supreme Court the claim was rejected. United States v. D'Auterieve, 15 How. 14. Full report is there given of the origin, nature, and extent of the claim, and in view of that fact it is not deemed necessary to reproduce the allegations of the petition in this opinion, as the whole substance of the same is given in the opinion of the court in that case.

Due appearance was entered in behalf of the United States in this case, and the district attorney filed an answer to the petition, setting up several defences, as follows: 1. That no such grants or mesne conveyances as those under which the petitioners claim were ever made. 2. That if any such grants were ever made as alleged, which is denied, that the lands were never separated by metes and bounds or actual survey from the mass of the public domain, and are therefore null and void by reason of uncertainty of location and vagueness of description, both as to the boundaries of the grants and to their extent.

Tracts of land of great extent were granted by royal charter to a certain association called the Western Company, and the claim of the appellants is that that company made concession of the tract in question to the grantor of their ancestor, the tract at the date of the concession being four leagues front on the right bank of the Mississippi River and extending back to the river Atchafalaya, a distance of ten or twelve miles. Neither the royal charter granting the land to the Western Company nor the concession to the grantor of their ancestor is given in evidence. Nothing of the kind is pretended, but the appellants allege that the letters-patent, bearing date in 1717, were issued in the name of the sovereign of France, by which the said company was created, and that by the fifth article of the same all the lands, coasts, ports, havens, and islands of the Province of Louisiana were given and granted to the said company, with power to give, sell, and grant the same to others, and that the company during that year or early in the next year conveyed the tract antecedently described to the grantor of their ancestor.

Their theory is that the concession was made by the French authorities before the province was ceded to Spain. History shows that France subsequently, by a secret treaty, transferred the province to Spain in pursuance of the stipulations between the contracting parties. When the first governor under the Spanish rule visited the province he reduced the tract to a front of twenty arpents, to which no objections appear to have been made by the claimant; but the successor of that magistrate, three years later, when he assumed the functions of governor of the province, enlarged the front to forty-four arpents, which perhaps was done at the request of the claimant. Galvez was the third governor of the province after the cession to Spain, and he, in the exercise of his powers, took away from the heirs of the alleged purchaser the whole front to the depth of forth arpents from the Mississippi River, leaving them nothing except what is called in legal phrase the back lands.

Throughout these several changes in the alleged title of the ancestor of the appellants and his immediate heirs, all parties appear to have acquiesced without any complaint. Nor do the appellants now claim any of the front land on the river Mississippi, nor the four leagues, nor the forty or forty-four arpents. Instead of that, their claim is to the back lands, the side lines commencing at a point forty arpents from the Mississippi River and extending back to the river Atchafalaya. Even as reduced the claim is a large one, amounting to perhaps five hundred thousand acres, but it is not more than one-fifteenth part of the original claim, as ppear by the documents exhibited in the transcript.

3. Besides denying the authenticity of the concession, the answer also denies in the most explicit terms that the tract, as described in the evidence, ever extended back to Atchafalaya River.

4. Support to that proposition is derived in the answer by referring to the regulations adopted two years before the second governor under Spanish rule enlarged the front to forty-four arpents, which provide that all grants fronting upon rivers shall be limited to a depth of forty arpents. White's Recopilacion, p. 299, art. 1.

5. That the case is in all respects the same as that previously decided by this court. United States v. D'Auterieve, 15 How. 14, 23.

No record of the concession, say the court in that case, has been produced, and after a thorough examination of the archives, both at New Orleans and in the appropriate offices for the deposit of such records, none can be found. Mention was then made of the proof exhibited in the case, which it seems consisted only of certain historical sketches given to the public of the first settlement of the province under the direction of the Western Company, together with some documentary evidence relating to the plantation of the alleged original donee through his agents, such as powers of attorney and some intermediate transfers of the titles in the...