Cite as: 510 U. S. 399 (1994)
Opinion of the Court
tiate an agreement for the allotment of Uintah Reservation lands and the "cession" of unallotted lands to the United States. Act of June 4, 1898, ch. 376, 30 Stat. 429. The Indians resisted those efforts as well. Various bills that would have opened the reservation unilaterally (i. e., without the consent of the Indians) were subsequently introduced in the Senate but were not enacted into law. See Leasing of Indian Lands, Hearings before the Senate Committee on Indian Affairs, S. Doc. No. 212, 57th Cong., 1st Sess., 3 (1902).
In 1902, Congress passed an Act which provided that if a majority of the adult male members of the Uintah and White River Indians consented, the Secretary of the Interior should make allotments by October 1, 1903, out of the Uintah Reservation. Act of May 27, 1902, ch. 888, 32 Stat. 263.1 The allotments under the 1902 Act were to be 80 acres for each head of a family and 40 acres for each other member of
1 The 1902 Act provided in relevant part: "That the Secretary of the Interior, with the consent thereto of the majority of the adult male Indians of the Uintah and the White River tribes of Ute Indians, to be ascertained as soon as practicable by an inspector, shall cause to be allotted to each head of a family eighty acres of agricultural land which can be irrigated and forty acres of such land to each other member of said tribes, said allotments to be made prior to October first, nineteen hundred and three, on which date all the unallotted lands within said reservation shall be restored to the public domain: Provided, That persons entering any of said land under the homestead law shall pay therefor at the rate of one dollar and twenty-five cents per acre: And provided further, That . . . the proceeds of the sale of the lands so restored to the public domain shall be applied, first, to the reimbursement of the United States for any moneys advanced to said Indians to carry into effect the foregoing provisions; and the remainder, under the direction of the Secretary of the Interior, shall be used for the benefit of said Indians. And the sum of seventy thousand and sixty-four dollars and forty-eight cents is hereby appropriated, out of any moneys in the Treasury not otherwise appropriated, to be paid to the Uintah and the White River tribes of Ute Indians, under the direction of the Secretary of the Interior, whenever a majority of the adult male Indians of said tribes shall have consented to the allotment of lands and the restoration of the unallotted lands within said reservation as herein provided." 32 Stat. 263-264.
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