United States v. Belt

• Decision Date: 29 February 1904
• Citation: 128 F. 168
• Parties: UNITED STATES v. BELT.
• Court: U.S. District Court — Middle District of Pennsylvania

128 F. 168

UNITED STATES v. BELT.

United States District Court, M.D. Pennsylvania.

February 29, 1904

George M. Watson, for the rule.

S. J M. McCarrell, U.S. Atty.

ARCHBALD District Judge.

The defendant was convicted of selling liquor to two Indian boys one of the Kickapoo and the other of the Caddo Tribe, in attendance at the government school at Carlisle, Pa. This school is in charge of Col. Pratt, a retired officer of the United States army, detailed for the purpose, and is sustained by appropriations for the Department of Indian Affairs, under the direction of the Secretary of the Interior. Like other similar schools, it was established to aid in educating and civilizing the hitherto uncivilized Indians. The prosecution is based on the act of January 30 1897, c. 109, 29 Stat. 506, ^[1] which prohibits, in sweeping terms, the selling, giving, or disposing of any malt, ardent, or intoxicating liquor of any kind to any Indian, a ward of the government, under charge of any Indian superintendent or agent, or any Indian over whom the government, though its departments, exercises guardianship. The line of legislation of which this is a part (referred to in the margin) ^[2] originated with the act of 1834, ^[3] and in its initial form was confined to the Indian country. But this limitation was stricken out by the amendment of 1864, and it was simply required as a substitute that the Indian to whom the sale was made should be under the charge of an agent or superintendent, as the result of which a party who makes a sale where that is the case is liable, wherever it may be. It was accordingly held in United States v. Holliday, 3 Wall. 407, 18 L.Ed. 182, that a sale was within the act, notwithstanding the fact that the Indian to whom it was made was one of the Chippewa Nation, the tribal organization of which had been practically dissolved, who was living on lands which had been certified to him individually; it being further shown that he received an annual allowance from the government, which was distributed to him, with others, through the head men of the tribe to whom it was paid over by the proper Indian agent. 'The policy of the act,' says Miller, J., 'is the protection of those Indians who are by treaty or otherwise under the pupilage of the government from the debasing influence of the use of spirits; and it is not easy to perceive why that policy should not require their preservation from this, to them, destructive poison, when they are outside of a reservation, as well as within it. ' Following this, it was held in U.S. v. Osborn (D.C.) 2 Fed. 58, that the sale was a prohibited one, although the Indian, who belonged to a tribe on a reservation under charge of an agent, had been permitted to live off of it for eight or ten years as a domestic in a farmer's family. And in U.S. v. Earl (C.C.) 17 F. 75, a similar ruling was made; the contention that an Indian must be not only potentially but actually under the charge of an agent not being sustained. In U.S. v. Hurshman (D.C.) 53 F. 543, a sale to an Indian of the Nez Perces tribe, who was at the time a regularly enlisted soldier in the army, on duty at Ft. Walla Walla, was held to offend. See, also, U.S. v. Flynn, 1 Dill. 451, Fed. Cas. No. 15,124; U.S. v. Burdick, 1 Dak. 142, 46 N.W. 571; Renfrow v. U.S., 3 Ok. 170, 41 P. 88. ^[4]

The act of 1897 is even broader in its terms than those which had preceded it. By it, as we have seen, a sale is prohibited 'to any Indian, a ward of the government under the charge of an Indian superintendent or agent, or any Indian including mixed bloods, over whom the government through its departments exercises guardianship. ' There can be no doubt that this extends to the Indian boys at Carlisle. Temporarily transferred from the reservations to which they belong, which, as declared by Judge Deady in U.S. v. Clapox (D.C.)...