fclicitates itsclf that "the only title they now have to this land, therefore, is that by which other Indians hold their lands, viz., the occupant or usnfruet right, and this they enjoy by the permission of the United States." Such being the case, and as the Government wonld probably never find it expedient and advisable to make the assignment referrod to, this tract, what- ever may be the eharacter of the land, must be and would con tinue comparatively worthless to them

Nevertheless, it appears that in 1841 one of the tree trea- ties made with the Sioux, but not ratified, half breeds for this same "valueless" tract of 384,000 acres of was with these very land; that they paid for all the improveinents they had made on it; and that the treaty commissioners are still instructed" to allow them for it now whatever sum the commissioners deem it to be " fairly worth "under no eiroumstances," however, "to exceed the stipulated in 1841." Putting this all into plain English, it simply a band of men take out tracts of land in fee-simple, and settle down like other men on their homesteads; that for ten years were to be paid $200,000 for it, and also to be sum means that in 1830 the Government promised to let the men begged to do so, and were refused; that at the end of hope of anything better, they ten years, thinking there was no agreed to sell the whole tract back to the Government for $200,000; that this bargain, also, the Government did not ful fit (the treaties never being ratified), and nine years later was found congratulating itsclf on the fact that, by reason of all these unfulfilled agreements, the land was still "held only in the same manuer as other Indian titles arc held "-i. e. , not "held" at allonly used on sufferance of the Government, and coald be taken possession of at any time at the Government's pleasurc. (This matter was supposed to be finally settled in 1854 by law of Congress; but in 1856 the thing appears to have been still nnsottled. A commission had been sent out to it, and the report was that "the subjeet has been one of some

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