Northern Pacific Railway Company v. United States of America

Decision Date24 February 1913
Docket NumberNo. 500,500
Citation57 L.Ed. 544,33 S.Ct. 368,227 U.S. 355
PartiesNORTHERN PACIFIC RAILWAY COMPANY, Mercantile Trust Company, Henry Yeackel and Flora Yeackel, His Wife; Wilbur S. Badley and Florence Badley, His Wife; C. D. Wise and _____ Wise, His Wife; and R. D. McCully, Appts., v. UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
CourtU.S. Supreme Court

Messrs. Charles Donnelly and Charles W. Bunn for appellants.

Assistant Attorney General Knaebel and Mr. S. W. Williams for appellee.

Mr. W. V. Tanner, Attorney General of Washington, and Mr. R. E. Campbell, Assistant Attorney, for the state of Washington.

Mr. Justice McKenna delivered the opinion of the court:

Bill in equity by the United States to annul patents issued May 10, 1895, and January 6, 1896, to the Northern Pacific Railroad Company, and March 5, 1901, and January 4, 1904, to its successor, the Northern Pacific Railwary Company, for certain described lands. The foundation of the bill is that the patents were issued by mistake as public lands granted to the railroad company under the act of Congress dated July 2, 1864 (13 Stat. at L. 365, chap. 217), the lands actually being, it is alleged by the government, part of the Yakima Indian Reservation under a treaty with the Yakimas of June 9, 1855 (12 Stat. at L. 951), ratified March 8, 1859, and proclaimed by the President April 18, 1859.

There is no question made of the title of the railroad and railway companies, or of their respective vendees, other than as the lands fall within or without the reservation. If they were within the boundaries of the reservation, they were lands of the Indians; otherwise, public lands of the United States, and passed to the companies, respectively, under the act of Congress and the patents issued in pursuance thereof.

The question then is, What were the boundaries of the reservation? or—to use the present tense as the more convenient what what are the boundaries of the reservation?

By article 1 of the treaty the Indians ceded, relinquished, and conveyed to the United States a tract of land which was explicitly described, reserving by article 2, from the tract, the land included within the following boundaries:

Commencing on the Yakima river, at the mouth of the Attahnam river; thence westerly along said Attahnam river to the forks; thence along the southern tributary to the Cascade mountains; thence southerly along the main ridge of said mountains, passing south and east of Mount Adams, to the spur whence flows the waters of the Klickitat and Pisco rivers; thence down said spur to the divide between the waters of said rivers; thence along said divide to the divide separating the waters of the Satass river from those flowing into the Columbia river; thence along said divide to the main Yakima, 8 miles below the mouth of the Satass river; and thence up the Yakima river to the place of beginning.

All of this tract, it is provided, 'shall be set apart, and, so far as necessary, surveyed and marked out, for the exclusive use and benefit' of the Indians, as an Indian reservation.

It will be observed that the calls in the description of the tract reserved are very confident, and seem to assure certainty by prominent and unmistakable natural monuments. Controversies, however, almost immediately arose, the Indians contending for one location of the calls and enterprising settlers contending for another. The Interior Department ordered a survey, which was made, and which is known in this record as the Schwartz survey. Upon this the title of appellants depends. The discontent of the Indians continued and another survey was ordered by the Interior Department to be made by E. C. Barnard. This survey is the foundation of the bill and of the contention of the government. It was made and reported to the Interior Department with a map delineating the exterior boundaries of the reservation. This report was transmitted to the Speaker of the House of Representatives with a draft of a bill granting authority for the detail by the Secretary of the Interior of an Indian inspector to negotiate an agreement with the Indians for the adjust- ment of their claim for the lands embraced in the tract claimed by them, containing 293,837 acres, as shown by the Barnard report; that is, for lands without the Schwartz, but within the Barnard, survey.

In pursuance of the recommendation of the Secretary of the Interior, Congress, on December 21, 1904, enacted the statute quoted in the margin.

After the passage of the act the government demanded a reconveyance of the lands, which was refused. This suit was then brought.

The controversy in the case, therefore, turns upon which of the surveys, Schwartz's or Barnard's, correctly marks the boundaries of the reservation. The difference in the surveys amounts to 293,837 acres. The and entered an decree canceling the patents. circuit court accepted the Barnard survey The decree was affirmed by the circuit court of appeals. 112 C. C. A. 359, 191 Fed. 947.

Sec. 1. That the Secretary of the Interior be, and he is hereby, authorized and directed, as hereinafter provided, to sell or dispose of unallotted lands embraced in the Yakima Indian Reservation proper, in the state of Washington, set aside and established by treaty with the Yakima Nation of Indians, dated June nine, eighteen hundred and fifty-five: Provided, That the claim of said Indians to the tract of land adjoining their present reservation on the west, excluded by erroneous boundary survey, and containing approximately two hundred and ninety-three thousand, eight hundred and thirty-seven acres, according to the findings, after examination of Mr. E. C. Barnard, topographer of the Geological Survey, approved by the Secretary of the Interior April seventh, nineteen hundred, is hereby recognized, and the said tract shall be regarded as a part of the Yakima Indian Reservation for the purposes of this act: Provided further, That where valid rights have been acquired prior to March fifth, nineteen hundred and four, to lands within said tract by bona fide settlers or purchasers under the public land laws, such rights shall not be abridged, and any claim of said Indians to these lands is hereby declared to be fully compensated for by the expenditure of money heretofore made for their benefit, and in the construction of irrigation works on the Yakima Indian Reservation. [33 Stat. at L. 595, chap. 22.]

The special controversy in the case is the location of the western boundary of the reservation. But, as partly determinative of that, the western point of the northern boundary must be considered. The northern boundary of the reservation commences at the junction of the Yakima and Attahnam rivers and proceeds to the forks of the latter, and along its southern tributary to the 'Cascade mountains.' What constitutes the Cascade mountains is the first serious dispute in the case. The appellants contend that the mountains are given location by the termination of the southern tributary of the Attahnam river. In other words, the headwaters of that tributary mark the Cascade mountains. But the next call is to be considered. By that call the line is to run 'southerly along the main ridge of said mountains;' and, as said by the circuit court, the line must reach the main ridge to run southerly along it. The court erred, appellants contend, by assuming that the treaty makers meant to designate the main ridge of the mountains instead of a ridge of the mountains. We cannot, of course, reproduce all of the argument of counsel. It is, in effect, that the treaty makers meant what they said, that their knowledge was not imperfect, that they knew where the waters of the Attahnam river terminated, and they turned south from there along 'that ridge of those mountains' in which they found themselves. Assuming this, it is said, 'every difficulty in following the calls of the treaty at once disppears.' But the difficulties do not disappear; they multiply, and mountains and rivers appear to conflict in their testimony. The next call must be changed to be accommodated to counsels' view. That call, in full, is this: 'Thence southerly along the main ridge of said mountains [Cascade mountains], passing south and east of Mount Adams, to the spur whence flows the waters of the Klickitat and Pisco rivers. Counsel would strike out the comma after the word 'mountains' and the comma after the word 'Adams,' asserting then the main ridge to be that which passes (passing) south and east of Mount Adams to the spurwhence whence flows the waters of the Klickitat and Pisco rivers. In other words, the call primarily locates and defines the ridge, and not the boundary line. And so change the call, it is further said, and there is intelligible continuity between it and the next call, which reads, 'thence down said spur whence flows the waters of the Klickitat and Pisco rivers) to the divide between the waters of said rivers.' Punctuation, it may be admitted, is a fallible standard of the meaning of a statute (Ewing v. Burnet, 11 Pet. 41, 54, 9 L. ed. 624, 630; Hammock v. Farmers' Loan & T. Co. 105 U. S. 77, 84, 85, 26 L. ed. 1111, 1113, 1114). It is, however, not without force, and in the present case the location of the commas is consistent with the purpose of simply marking the course of the boundary line. But even without changing the punctuation, counsel contend 'that the words 'passing south and east of Mount Adams' qualify the word 'mountains,' and indicate which ridge was intended; namely, a main ridge (as distinguished from spurs or 'subdivides') which should pass south and east of Mount Adams.' We cannot assume a plurality of main ridges, and that the treaty meant to distinguish one from the others. The main ridge necessarily had a definite and conspicuous individuality and needed no identification. It is used in article 1 of the treaty to mark the course of the boundary his line to it because he considered other the United States. The...

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