The contract shall be certified by some person appointed for that purpose by the President, but shall not be valid until the President approves the same. A title shall be given by the United States on the completion of the payment.

ART. IV. At the end of five years, all the creeks entitled to these selections, and desirous of remaining, shall receive patents therefor in fee simple, from the United States.

A very large part of these selections remain unpatented. Such as the records show to have been sold by the Indians and the contracts of sale to have been approved by the President will be taken up and considered with a view to the issuance of patent, so that this matter, which has lain dormant for three-quarters of a century, may be closed.

There are a number of cases, however, where the records either do not show the sale to have been approved by the President or that the purchase money was paid, or do show that he disapproved it or that the purchase money was not paid; and in other cases this bureau has been informed that the local records in Alabama indicate that the Indian sold the land after the expiration of five years, when he was entitled to a patent, as provided in Article IV of the treaty.

The situation thus presented calls for speedy action by Congress. The lands involved have become valuable, and there appears to be much uneasiness and uncertainty in the minds of the present claimants to the lands.

INDIAN RESERVATION OPENINGS.

During the last year there were 131 tracts, a part of lands formerly reserved and used in connection with the Cheyenne and Arapahoe School at Darlington, Okla., offered for sale under the provisions of the homestead laws, at public auction; 60 tracts were sold at an average of $38.60 per acre, 43 tracts at an average of $48 per acre, 16 tracts at an average of $66 per acre, and 10 tracts at an average of $67.20 per acre. This is the highest price at which lands were ever disposed of under the homestead laws.

Three hundred and four lots in the Timber Lake town site, in the Cheyenne River Reservation in South Dakota, were sold at public auction, and the amount bid for the same aggregated $79,581, the prices ranging from $25 to $1,400 per lot, which was greatly in excess of their appraised value.

In the town site of Dupree, in the Cheyenne River Reservation, S. Dak., there were sold 255 lots, the amount bid aggregating $46,615, the prices ranging from $40 to $1,200 per lot, an increase over their appraised value.

The unentered lands in the ceded portion of the Crow Reservation in Montana, and in the former Uintah Reservation in Utah, were

offered for sale at public auction, and portions of them were sold at prices ranging from 50 cents to $20.50 per acre. The remainder of these lands were not sold because of lack of desirable bids.

CHIPPEWA LOGGING, MINNESOTA.

During the past fiscal year there were logged under contracts on ceded Chippewa lands 80,005,150 feet of timber of the value of $572,830.73, against totals of 88,503,880 feet of timber, valued at $553,005.42, the preceding year.

On September 15, 1910, a sale of timber was held at Cass Lake, Minn., at which there were sold under the act of June 27, 1902 (32 Stat., 400), the timber on 118,362.98 acres, estimated to contain 51,310,000 feet of white pine and 263,475,000 feet of Norway pine, the total amount of the accepted bids being $2,709,330.04, an average price of $8.59. This is the largest sale of Chippewa timber yet held, and the highest prices were realized.

All of the unsold pine timber on ceded Chippewa lands is to be offered for sale at Cass Lake, Minn., on October 21, 1911.

The "cut-over" lands, or lands from which all the timber has been cut, are opened to homestead settlement and entry from time to time, 45,779.12 acres of such lands having been opened to entry on August 22, 1911.

The following statement shows the amount of timber sold and the amount of the bids at the different sales, based on the original Government estimates, the amount of timber actually cut, and the price paid for the timber.

1 Sale completed, all timber sold having been logged.

The trespass statement includes trespass on Indian allotments and State swamp selections.

The average price realized per thousand feet has been $6.514.

The percentage of white pine has been nearly 64 per cent.

The total expense of logging the past year has been $28,580.88, and the total expense to date has been $253,496.44, which is 4.3 per cent of the total receipts.

LIEU

SELECTIONS FOR LANDS IN INDIAN
RESERVATIONS.

The act of April 21, 1904 (33 Stat., 211), provided for an exchange by an owner of private land over which an Indian reservation has been extended by Executive order, for vacant, nonmineral, nontimber, surveyed public lands of equal area and value and situated in the same State or Territory. Lieu selections of lands under this act have been made in the Zuni and Navajo Indian Reservations in New Mexico, and Moqui Indian Reservation in Arizona, aggregating 433,113.70 acres. Patents have issued on such selections for 237,545.88 acres, and selections for 1,703.51 acres have been approved by the Secretary of the Interior. In addition, selections of 42,360 acres have been recommended for approval, and selections for 151,504.31 acres are under examination.

RELINQUISHMENTS.

The misuse of the relinquishment very often is the cause of an additional expense to the honest homeseeker, and prevents him from securing the right to enter a tract of land, because of an existant entry by some party, who has no intention of perfecting his claim, but who holds the land until he can get some one who will pay him to relinquish it back to the Government. Every possible method has been adopted under existing legislation to prevent the practice of trafficking in relinquishments. The greatest evil arises in the misuse of soldiers' declaratory statements. In three land offices in one State there were more than 3,000 soldiers' declaratory statements filed between May, 1910, and July, 1911. Less than 5 per cent of the declarants transmuted their declaratory statements; the remainder were made on the instigation of parties who have filed them for the purpose of compelling honest settlers to deal with them and pay money to secure a right which they should have without cost. Those who have trafficked in relinquishments have been indicted at various times, but it seems almost impossible to stamp out the evil.

The difficulty of legislating on this question is that there are, no doubt, many worthy cases wherein it would be a hardship to prevent in any way a man who is unable to perfect his entry from selling the improvements on his place to a homeseeker. I am of the opinion, however, that legislation could be enacted which would protect the honest homeseeker and would also put an end to this unwholesome trafficking in relinquishments. To that end, I have the honor to

recommend that section 1, of the act entitled "An act for the relief of settlers on public lands," approved May 14, 1880, might appropriately be amended to require proof of the good faith of the entry sought to be relinquished, and that the entryman has actually resided upon the land and made valuable improvements thereon in all cases where the relinquishment is presented within one year from the date of the entry.

SUMMARY OF PROPOSED LEGISLATION.

In summary of and addition to foregoing recommendations relative to new legislation, I would strongly urge the importance of statutory provisions covering and embracing the subjects now to be briefly enumerated and specified, as follows:

(1) To transfer to the Reclamation Service all duties pertaining to the collection and disposition of moneys due on account of building, maintenance, and operation charges, in connection with Government. reclamation projects. This is the subject and object of a pending bill (S. 889) in reference to which a favorable report was submitted by the department under date of May 29, 1911.

(2) Entry for town site purposes of lands valuable for coal, oil, or gas, should be permitted, with provision whereby the Government will retain the title to the coal, oil, or gas contents of the lands so entered, in like manner as such deposits or contents are excepted from conveyance by the act of Congress approved June 22, 1910 (36 Stat., 583).

(3) Owing to the nonexistence of any common law of crimes which the Federal courts can administer, many forms of false swearing seem to be not punishable by proceedings in those courts. Attempted prosecutions for false oaths in relation to the character of the land of which entry is sought, or concerning the legal qualification of the would-be entryman, have failed of success because it was held that these oaths were not specifically required by statute. The facts bearing on these questions must always be ascertained by the department, and I earnestly recommend that this defect in the law be repaired.

(4) Registers and receivers are empowered by law (act of Congress approved Jan. 31, 1903, 32 Stat., 790) to issue subpoenas for witnesses in cases pending before them. They should also be empowered to require a witness to bring with him and produce papers, books, and documents in his possession and constituting material and important evidence in relation to any issue in the pending cause.

(5) The act of Congress approved January 31, 1903 (32 Stat., 790), does not prescribe the fees chargeable by officers before whom the depositions therein provided for are submitted. The provisions of this statute are very extensively availed of by the Government in

cases involving the validity of public land entries, and, owing to the varying statutes of the several States, and to the difference between these statutes and the Federal law relating to fees (act of Congress approved May 28, 1896, 29 Stat., 184), some considerable burden of inquiry has been imposed on the accounting officers of the Government, and some confusion in the practice and accounts of field officers has resulted. I recommend that the act of 1903 (supra) be so amended as to provide for uniform fees of 20 cents per folio of 100 words in every such deposition, and 10 cents per folio for every copy furnished a party to the cause, on his request therefor, with no other charge for or on account of administering the oath to a witness or preparing a certificate to complete the deposition. A minimum fee of $2 for the first deposition taken at the instance of any party to a cause should be permitted.

(6) The act of Congress approved January 13, 1897 (29 Stat., 484), providing for reservations of public lands as sites for stock-watering reservoirs, has ceased to be of any very considerable public advantage. On the contrary, it has for some time been a means whereby such reservations are procured for purposes foreign to the law. Very often it is employed to accomplish the reservation of lands until such time as the applicant for such reservation can qualify himself to acquire the legal title under some other law. In other cases it is obtained purely for speculative purposes and is placed upon the market immediately following accomplishment of the reservation, the reservoir claimant offering his relinquishment for sale. I respectfully recommend that this statute be promptly repealed.

(7) The several statutes providing for rights of way and easements for canals, ditches, telegraph and telephone lines, reservoirs, and other structures, are heterogeneous and wholly lacking in any uniformity of principle or rule in relation to the character of the interest or estate secured, and in respect of the duration of such interest or right. Some provision should be made whereby rights under these grants will terminate automatically at the expiration of a stated period of time, in the event of failure to construct the proposed works, or following nonuser or abandonment for a similar length of time. As the law now exists, the Government is unable to relieve the public land of the burden of these paper easements without resort to suit in a court of equity, whereby to obtain a decree of forfeiture. A similar provision for automatic forfeiture should be provided for rights of way granted to railroads by the act of March 3, 1875 (18 Stat., 472).

(8) The appropriation of $3,000, made by the act of Congress approved June 25, 1910 (36 Stat., 775-997), to be used in the preparation and publication of a revised edition of the Manual of Surveying Instructions, has not been expended, preparation of the revision