336
Opinion of the Court
more rapid than heretofore." Report of the Senate Committee on Indian Affairs, S. Rep. No. 196, 53d Cong., 2d Sess., 1 (1894).
In accordance with the Dawes Act, each member of the Yankton Tribe received a 160-acre tract from the existing reservation, held in trust by the United States for 25 years. Members of the Tribe acquired parcels of land throughout the 1858 reservation, although many of the allotments were clustered in the southern part, near the Missouri River. By 1890, the allotting agent had apportioned 167,325 acres of reservation land, 95,000 additional acres were subsequently allotted under the Act of February 28, 1891, 26 Stat. 795, and a small amount of acreage was reserved for government and religious purposes. The surplus amounted to approximately 168,000 acres of unallotted lands. See Letter, at 5.
In 1892, the Secretary of the Interior dispatched a three-member Yankton Indian Commission to Greenwood, South Dakota, to negotiate for the acquisition of these surplus lands. See Act of July 13, 1892, 27 Stat. 137 (appropriating funds to enable the Secretary to "negotiate with any Indians for the surrender of portions of their respective reservations"). When the Commissioners arrived on the reservation in October 1892, they informed the Tribe that they had been sent by the "Great Father" to discuss the cession of "this land that [members of the Tribe] hold in common," Council of the Yankton Indians (Oct. 8, 1892), transcribed in S. Exec. Doc. No. 27, at 48, and they abruptly encountered opposition to the sale from traditionalist tribal leaders. See Report of the Yankton Indian Commission (Mar. 31, 1893), reprinted in S. Exec. Doc. No. 27, at 9-11 (hereinafter Report). In the lengthy negotiations that followed, members of the Tribe raised concerns about the suggested price per acre, the preservation of their annuities under the 1858 Treaty, and other outstanding claims against the United States, but they did not discuss the future boundaries of the
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