ROYCE. ] TREATY OF APRIL 27, 1868. 361 
small crops were entirely destroyed by the rayages of the grasshoppers. 
The winter and spring of 1874~75 found them, to the number of about 
three thousand, in a starving condition. In this dilemma they held a 
council and voted to remove to Indian Territory, asking permission at 
the same time to send the male portion of the tribe in advance to select 
a home and to break the necessary ground for planting crops. They 
also voted a request that the United States should proceed to sell their 
reserve in Nebraska, and thus secure funds for their proper establish- 
ment in the Indian Territory. Permission was granted them in accord- 
ance with their request, and legislation was asked of Congress to enable 
the desired arrangement to be carried into effect. Congress failed to 
take any action in relation to the subject during the session ending 
March 3, 1875. It therefore became necessary to feed the Pawnees dur- 
ing the ensuing season.! 
The following year, by an act approved April 10,? Congress provided 
for the sale of the Pawnee lands in Nebraska, as a means of securing 
funds for their relief and establishment in their new home, the bounda- 
ries of which are therein described. It consists of a tract of country in 
the forks of the Arkansas and Cimarron Rivers comprising an area of 
283,020 acres. Of this tract, 230,014 acres were originally a portion of 
the Cherokee domain west of 96° and were paid for at the rate of 70 
cents per acre. The remainder was ceded to the United States by the 
Creek treaty of 1866, 
Appraisal of the lands west of 96°.—By the 5th section of the Indian 
appropriation act of May 29, 1872,° the President of the United States 
was authorized to cause an appraisement to be made of that portion of 
the Cherokee lands lying west of 96° west longitude and west of the 
Osage lands, or, in other words, all of the Cherokee lands lying west of 
the Arkansas Niver and south of Kansas mentioned in the 16th article 
of the Cherokee treaty of July 19, 1866. No appropriation, however, 
was made to defray the expense of such an appraisal, and in conse. 
quence no steps were taken toward a compliance with the terms of the 
act. This legislation was had in deference to the long continued com- 
plaints of the Cherokees that the United States had, without their 
consent, appropriated to the use of other tribes a large portion of these 
lands, for which they (the Cherokees) had received no compensation. 
The history of these alleged unlawful appropriations of the Cherokee 
domain may be thus briefly summarized: 
1. By treaty of October 18, 1865,‘ with the Kiowas and Comanches, 
the United States set apart for their use and occupancy an immense 
tract of country, which in part included all of the Cherokee country 

1 See report of Commissioner of Indian Affairs to Secretary of the Interior, Mareh 
6, 1875. 
2 United States Statutes at Large, Vol. XIX, p. 28. 
* United States Statutes at Large, Vol. XVII, p. 190. 
*United States Statutes at Large, Vol. XIV, p. 717. 
