Tlingit and Haida Indians of Alaska v. United States

• Decision Date: 07 October 1959
• Docket Number: No. 47900.,47900.
• Citation: 177 F. Supp. 452
• Parties: TLINGIT AND HAIDA INDIANS OF ALASKA v. UNITED STATES.
• Court: U.S. Claims Court

177 F. Supp. 452

TLINGIT AND HAIDA INDIANS OF ALASKA v. UNITED STATES.

No. 47900.

United States Court of Claims.

October 7, 1959.

I. S. Weissbrodt, Washington, D. C., for plaintiffs. David Cobb, Abe W. Weissbrodt, Rella R. Shwartz, Washington, D. C., Jay H. Hoag, and Clarence G. Lindquist, Duluth, Minn., were on the briefs.

Ralph A. Barney, Washington, D. C., with whom was Asst. Atty. Gen. Perry W. Morton, for defendant.

James Craig Peacock, Washington, D. C., for intervenors.

LARAMORE, Judge.

This is a suit against the United States by the Tlingit and Haida Indians of Alaska.¹ The jurisdictional act² under which this suit is brought is set forth in full in finding 1. The act authorizes the court to "hear, examine, adjudicate, and enter judgment upon any and all claims which said Indians may have, or claim to have, against the United States." Section 1 of the act defines the Tlingit and Haida Indians of Alaska as "all those Indians of the whole or mixed blood of the Tlingit and Haida Tribes who are residing in Russian America, now called the Territory of Alaska, in the region known and described as southeastern Alaska, lying east of the one hundred and forty-first meridian." Section 2 of the act describes and defines the claims which are authorized to be submitted to the court for "settlement and determination of the * * * amount equitably and justly due to said Indians from the United States," as (1) all claims, legal or equitable for lands or other tribal or community property rights taken from the Tlingit and Haida Indians by the United States without compensation therefor, or (2) for the failure or refusal of the United States to compensate the claimant Indians for lands or other tribal or community property rights claimed to be owned by the claimant Indians and which property or property rights the United States appropriated to its own uses without the consent of the Indians, or (3) for the failure or refusal of the United States to protect the interest of the claimant Indians in their lands or in other tribal or community property, and for the loss of the same (a) at the time of the purchase of Alaska from Russia in 1867, or (b) at some later date prior to the passage of the jurisdictional act. The same section provides that the loss to the claimant Indians of "their right, title, or interest, arising from occupancy and use, in lands or other tribal or community property, without just compensation therefor, shall be held sufficient ground for relief hereunder." Section 4 of the act provides, among other things, that it shall be no bar to the suit that the Indians may have been made citizens of the United States or that they may have severed their tribal relations with the Tlingit and Haida Tribes. Section 7 sets forth those Tlingit and Haida Indians who are entitled to share in any judgment of the court and provides for the making of Tlingit and Haida rolls. Section 8 of the act provides for the deposit of the judgment in the Treasury to the credit of each community of Tlingit and Haida Indians, and for the use of such money for the benefit of all the Indians. It also provides that none of the funds recovered or interest thereon may be used for per capita payments.

On February 29, 1956, the court, under Rule 38(b), 28 U.S.C.A., ordered a separate trial be held of the issues relating to the liability of the defendant with respect to (1) whether the claimant Indians had Indian title to the lands and waters claimed in Alaska at the time in 1867 when Alaska was purchased by the United States from the Russians, and if so, the extent of land and waters so owned; (2) whether the plaintiffs' Indian title rights in the land and waters were taken or impaired by the United States in 1867, or (3) assuming plaintiffs had Indian title to lands and waters in Alaska in 1867 and thereafter, and such rights survived and were not later abandoned, whether plaintiffs are entitled to recover under the act. The issue of abandonment of any property or rights therein and the amount of recovery and the amount of offsets, if any, were matters reserved for further proceedings.

After extensive hearings held pursuant to the above order, the Commissioner of the Court made detailed findings of fact concerning the culture and characteristics of the Tlingit and Haida Indians, the manner in which they used and occupied the claimed lands, and the extent and location of the land so used and occupied in 1867 and long prior thereto. Findings 7 through 57.

The Commissioner found that the Tlingit Indians were a homogeneous and interrelated group of Indians speaking a single language different from that of their neighbors; that they were a non-agricultural people who were noted primarily for their use of marine products and wood; that their social structure emphasized formalistic family groups or clans, each clan having rights, respected by other clans, to the use of particular land and water areas of economic importance such as ocean waterfronts, bays, rivers, streams, or inland hunting areas; that the clans were acutely aware of their identity as Tlingit Indians in general and as members of households and clans in particular; that they had no central political body to govern the entire Tlingit people, although collectively they occupied a contiguous stretch of coast on the mainland and adjoining islands and were closely unified by common customs, language, family ties, trade, ceremonials, and a consciousness of their oneness as a homogeneous group. The Haida Indians were also a homogeneous group having customs and modes of life closely resembling those of the Tlingits. The Haidas spoke a different language and did not use the interior of their islands to the same extent that the Tlingits did. Neither the Tlingits nor the Haidas were oganized politically in a manner resembling the tribal organizations of the Indians of the United States, and the relatively large subgroups within each group were not organized politically as are Indian tribes usually. These subgroups, sometimes called "tribes" or "kons" by the Indians themselves, took names which had geographical significance, being the name of the river, bay, or island which the particular clan used and occupied. A map introduced in evidence as plaintiffs' exhibit 169 is reproduced herein to show the location of the principal villages of the Tlingit and Haida Indians between 1867 and 1884 and also in modern times, and the areas occupied by the various kons. The somewhat complex social structure of the various divisions and subdivisions of the Tlingit and Haida Indians is described in finding 24.

In general, the Tlingits and Haidas were each divided into two groups or moieties, and each moiety was divided into a number of clans. Membership in a clan descended through the mother, and marriage within the clan or within the moiety was forbidden so that a clan was often distributed or divided among several villages, some of the larger clans or families being widely scattered throughout southeastern Alaska. Since no one in a clan could marry anyone else from that clan and had to associate with another clan from the opposite moiety, two local clans from opposite moieties settling in a village constituted the closest thing to a "tribe" as that term is known in its usual sense. Usually, however, several local clans would settle in a single village. The villages consisted of large houses in each of which one or more families belonging to the local clans would live, and each house had a local clan designation. Each local clan in a village owned and used, in accordance with the Tlingit and Haida manner, large land and water areas adjacent to the village. The several larger Tlingit and Haida subdivisions which took the names of their principal winter villages are listed in finding 25.

The land and water owned and claimed by each local clan division in a village was usually well-defined as to area and use. Clan property included fishing streams, coastal waters and shores, hunting grounds, berrying areas, sealing rocks, house sites in the villages, and the rights to passes into the interior. Tracts of local clan territory were parceled out or assigned to the individual house groups for use and exploitation and the chief of the local clan, assisted by other house chief elders of the clan, formed a sort of council which controlled the clan's affairs. Smaller areas belonging to a house within a clan remained clan property whenever a house ceased to exist. The modes of living and of dealing with property among these Indians were regulated by rigidly enforced tradition and custom, and, except under special circumstances, there was no authority in a clan or clan division to sell, transfer or otherwise dispose of, in whole or in part, any claimed area of land or water. Land was transferred from one clan to another only as compensation for damages, as gifts in connection with marriages and the like, and such transfers were infrequent. In addition to the areas which were claimed and used exclusively by individual houses, there were certain common areas which could be used by all the clans comprising a particular group of clans residing in a single geographical area. Certain designated offshore fishing and sea mammal hunting areas in larger bodies of water, channels and bays and stretches of open sea could also be used in common by all members of the various clans residing in a particular geographical area, but Indians residing in other geographical areas had no right to such use.

The Tlingit and Haida Indians made extensive use of most of the natural resources of their country, both of the land and sea, including the fish, sea mammals, shellfish, kelp and seaweed, animals, birds, timber, berry bushes, plants and minerals. Finding 33. Prior to our acquisition of Alaska these Indians enjoyed a relatively high degree of civilization, were industrious and prosperous, and the accumulation of surplus...