Indian Claims Commission - Land Claims

Land Claims

Land was the dominant concern of the litigation by tribes before the Indian Claims Commission (ICC). The statutory authority did not permit this tribunal granting or restoring land to the tribes, but only awarding money based upon a net acreage figure of lost lands times the monetary market value of an acre at the time of taking. This limitation on the authority of the ICC rankled in the minds of many tribal peoples—e. g., the Pit River Indians of northern California, and the Teton and Lakota of the Black Hills, South Dakota. In a few instances, by way of settlement acts, tribes gained some monetary funds to buy acreage (as with the Penobscot and Passamoddy of Maine and the Catawba of the Carolinas). Special acts on occasion did restore some acreage as with the Havasupai at the Grand Canyon.

Researchers in preparing expert testimony for litigation brought by the tribes as plainiffs or for the defense by the U. S. government explored all forms of data, including the earliest possible maps of original title—i. e., native or indigenous—territory and the cartographic presentations based upon treaties, statutes, and executive orders—generally identified as recognized title. In most cases, recognized title lands could be more easily demonstrated in litigation, while native territory depended upon Indian informants, explorers, trappers, military personnel, missionaries and early field ethnographers. Scholars sought to reconstruct native ecology in terms of food supply and other resources of the environment. In this way, some mappable notion of original territory could be gained. As the Final Report of the ICC revealed, compromises over territorial parcels led to rejecting some acreage that had been utilized by more than one tribe.

The briefs, testimonies, quantum data, findings, and decisions were published in the 1970s in a multiple series of microfiche by Clearwater Publishing, Co., NY, which publisher was sold to CIS, then to Nexis/Lexis. Garland Publishing, NY, also in the 1970s, published some two hundred books containing some but not all of the materials pertaining to the claims cases.