608 A NATIONAL PLAN FOR AMERICAN FORESTRY 



Thus the Bureau of Indian Affairs has had the custody and manage- 

 ment of Indian matters for over 100 years. 



From the date of discovery of f this country, when, nominally at 

 least, the Indians were in possession of all the land, certain Indian 

 rights of occupancy have been recognized, and it has been customary 

 from the earliest days to secure at least a color of title from the Indians 

 by the payment of a relatively small sum for the land that was ac- 

 quired from the natives. A Federal act of 1790 (1 Stat.L.137) pro- 

 vided that no sale of land by an Indian or a tribe to any person or per- 

 sons or to any State should be valid unless made under the provisions 

 of a Federal treaty with the tribe. Under authority of this act the 

 Federal Government continued to make treaties with the Indians for 

 the cession of lands as if they were separate nations (2, p. 1041). 

 Lands reserved to the Indians by these treaties came to be known as 

 "Treaty reservations." This policy was discontinued in 1871, when 

 by act of March 3 (16 Stat.L.566) the Congress declared that there- 

 after no treaties should be made with Indian tribes. By this act the 

 Congress asserted its plenary power to legislate with respect to Indian 

 affairs and to make whatever disposition of Indian lands appeared 

 necessary or advisable. This power, even to the extent of abrogating 

 a treaty, has been fully sustained by the Supreme Court. Under 

 authority of this act, the lands which have been set aside for the use 

 and occupancy of the various Indian bands and tribes by Executive 

 orders have come to be known as " Executive order reservations." 



Under various enabling acts, many allotments to individual Indians 

 or additions to existing reservations have been made from the unappro- 

 priated public domain and many thousands of acres of land have been 

 purchased for tribal or individual Indian use. Thus the four sources 

 of Indian lands now under the jurisdiction of the Bureau of Indian 

 Affairs are in order of their importance, as follows: 



1. Treaty reservations. 



2. Executive order reservations. 



3. Additions to reservations by 



(a) Purchase. 



(b) Executive order from public domain. 



(c) Executive order from national forests, and other national 



reservations. 



4. Individual allotments 



(a) From unappropriated public domain. 



(b) By purchase. 



The various Indian reservations originally contained, as many of 

 them still do, a great deal of fine timber. As has been the case with 

 other forms of Indian property, the amount of interest, both official 

 and general, evidenced in Indian timber has kept pace with the 

 economic value of this Indian property. Generally speaking, Indian 

 reservations were made in what was then relatively inaccessible 

 country, and the exploitation of Indian timber resources, whether 

 irregular and illegal in the early days as has been alleged, or under the 

 supervision of the Federal Government in more recent times, has 

 grown with the general economic development of those regions in 

 which Indian reservations with important timber resources were 

 located. Thus, from 1789 when the "Indian problem" was first 

 officially recognized until the early 1880's, no great amount of atten- 

 tion was paid to the question of the actual ownership or management 



