A NATIONAL PLAN FOR AMERICAN FORESTRY 609 



of the timber on Indian reservations. It was an early policy of the 

 Indian Service, however, to permit Indians to remove timber from 

 reservations for sale. 



Due to the actual need of the Indians and of their still more urgent imaginary 

 need for funds, and in view of the pecuniary interest of the lumbermen and their 

 agents in the acquirement of logs or stumpage from Indian lands, it may be 

 conceded that not all the proceedings were strictly regular and ethical (2, 

 p. 1042). 



During this period the Indian timberlands were probably subject 

 to much less illegal pilfering than were the timber resources of the en- 

 tire Nation which were contained within the great area of unsettled, 

 unpatented public lands. Although many complaints of timber 

 stealing from public and Indian lands had been made in the early 

 part of the nineteenth century it was not until the late 1860's that 

 reports of reservation timber looting became numerous. Additional 

 complaints during the next 20 years aroused public interest in this 

 phase of the problem of Indian affairs, sufficiently to stir up a con- 

 gressional investigation of Indian timberlands in the Lake States in 

 March 1888 (3, p. 228). 



For many years there had been a difference of opinion as to whether 

 or not the property rights vested in the Indians for reservations estab- 

 lished by treaties or Executive orders included standing timber. 

 As late as 1873 it was declared by the highest court that the Indians 

 had only a bare right of occupancy in their lands, and in 1888 and 

 1890 two successive Attorneys General of the United States held that 

 the proceeds derived from timber cut in trepass from lands held in 

 common by Indians under the ordinary Indian title belonged to the 

 United States and not to the Indians of the band occupying the 

 reservation (2, p. 1042). These decisions were greatly at variance 

 with the then existing policy of the Indian Service, which allowed 

 Indians to remove timber for sale. This difference of opinion, the 

 complaints of irregularities in Indian timber matters, and the grow- 

 ing consciousness or awakening of the entire Nation to the general 

 timber problem, were all factors in bringing the timber resources of 

 the Indians before the public, and for the enactment of legislation 

 looking to the proper management of these resources. Although the 

 question of property rights in timber has been definitely settled by 

 Supreme Court decisions, many people still think of and discuss 

 Indian timber resources as if they were public property. 



By an act of February 16, 1889 (25 Stat.L., 673) the Congress 

 authorized the cutting of dead timber from any Indian reservation 

 for sale, providing the President was satisfied there was no evidence 

 that the timber had been intentionally burned. Several other acts 

 pertaining to specific reservations (3, p. 230) were passed from 1889 

 on, which are interesting mainly because they were instrumental in 

 setting up governmental machinery to dispose of Indian timber and 

 mark the beginning of forestry work in the Indian Service, in that 

 they provide for "the scientific and businesslike disposal of the 

 Indian pine lands and the full protection of the rights of the Indian 

 in connection therewith." 



No act of general application other than the "dead and down" act 

 of February 16, 1889, was passed until the act of June 25, 1910 (36 

 Stat.L., 857) which authorized the sale of mature timber from allotted 

 lands anywhere within the United States and from tribal lands of any 



