United States v. the Choctaw Nation and the Chickasaw Nation

Background

A group of freedmen who had lived among the Chickasaw sought money and land under an 1866 treaty that promised $300,000 be held in trust and forty-acre allotments to freedmen if certain rights were not granted. The Chickasaw legislature passed an act in 1873 declaring adoption of the freedmen, but that act awaited United States approval and was not approved until 1894. Later Chickasaw acts in 1876 and 1885 declared refusal to adopt the freedmen and asked the United States to remove them or otherwise deal with their status. The freedmen sued in the Court of Claims for their share of the treaty money and allotments, and the lower court denied their claim.

Reasoning

The central question was whether the freedmen had been adopted into the Chickasaw Nation as the treaty required. The Court looked to the 1873 act’s conditional nature, the 1876 and 1885 Chickasaw legislative acts showing refusal, and an 1898 opinion of the Secretary of the Interior interpreting Congress’s 1894 approval as assent to a tribal act rather than a Congressional grant of membership. The treaty itself specified that the $300,000 would be held for freedmen only if they removed from the territory; none removed. The Court concluded the freedmen were not adopted and thus did not gain the treaty rights or the disputed share of the trust fund.

Real world impact

As a result, the freedmen do not receive the $300,000 trust distribution or broader land allotments claimed in this suit. The opinion notes Congress did not remove the freedmen and had provided statutory arrangements for allotments from Indian lands and related payments, but the Court’s ruling leaves the freedmen without the treaty-based money or membership rights. The Supreme Court affirmed the Court of Claims’ decree.