404
Opinion of the Court
the Tribes. The Act also provided that when the deadline for allotments passed, "all the unallotted lands within said reservation shall be restored to the public domain" and subject to homesteading at $1.25 per acre. Ibid. The proceeds from the sale of lands restored to the public domain were to be used for the benefit of the Indians.
A month after the passage of the 1902 Act, Congress directed the Secretary of the Interior to set apart sufficient land to serve the grazing needs of the Indians remaining on the reservation. J. Res. 31, 57th Cong., 1st Sess. (1902), 32 Stat. 744.2 The resolution clarified that $70,000 appropriated by the 1902 Act was to be paid to the Indians "without awaiting their action upon the proposed allotment in severalty of lands in that reservation and the restoration of the surplus lands to the public domain." Id., at 745.
In January 1903, this Court held that Congress can unilaterally alter reservation boundaries. Lone Wolf v. Hitchcock, 187 U. S. 553, 567-568. On Mar. 3, 1903, Congress directed the Secretary to allot the Uintah lands unilaterally if the Indians did not give their consent by June 1 of that year, and deferred the opening of the unallotted lands "as provided by the [1902 Act]" until October 1, 1904. Act of Mar. 3, 1903,
2 The 1902 Joint Resolution provided in relevant part: "In addition to the allotments in severalty to the Uintah and White River Utes of the Uintah Indian Reservation in the State of Utah, the Secretary of the Interior shall, before any of said lands are opened to disposition under any public land law, select and set apart for the use in common of the Indians of that reservation such an amount of non-irrigable grazing lands therein at one or more places as will subserve the reasonable requirements of said Indians for the grazing of live stock.
. . . . . "The item of seventy thousand and sixty-four dollars and forty-eight cents appropriated by the Act which is hereby supplemented and modified, to be paid to the Uintah and White River tribes of Ute Indians in satisfaction of certain claims named in said Act, shall be paid to the Indians entitled thereto without awaiting their action upon the proposed allotment in severalty of lands in that reservation and the restoration of the surplus lands to the public domain." 32 Stat. 744-745.
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