doubtless acquires general jurisdiction, civil and criminal, for the preservation of public order, and the protection of persons and property, throughout its limits, except where it has ceded exclusive jurisdiction to the United States. The rights of local sovereignty, including the title to lands held in trust for municipal uses, and in the shores of navigable waters below high-water mark, vest in the state and not in the United States (46).

§ 163. Effect of transfer of title on permanent immovable structures. Where the inhabitants or residents of a domain belonging to a nation erect buildings and structures of a permanent character upon soil to which they have no title, such structures become a part of the land and pass with the deed of cession, unless there is some reservation in the treaty with the ceding country. In the same manner all permanent forts and appurtenances thereto pass with the ground of the territory (47).

§ 164. Status of Indian tribes. "From the beginning of the government to the present time, they (48) have been treated as 'wards of the nation,' 'in a state of pupilage,' 'dependent political communities,' they and their country 'are considered by foreign nations, as well as by ourselves, as being so completely under the sovereignty and dominion of the United States, that any attempt to acquire their lands, or to form a political connection with them, would be considered by all as an invasion of

46 Van Brocklin v. Tennessee, 117 U. S. 167. See also New Orleans v. United States, 10 How. 662, 737; Pollard v. Hagan, 3 How. 212; Goodtitle v. Kibbe, 9 How. 471; Doe v. Beebe, 13 How. 25; Barney v. Keokuk, 94 U. S. 324; Ill. Cent. Ry. v. Ill., 146 U. S. 384.

47 Kincaid v. United States, 150 U. S. 483.

48 Cherokee Nation v. Ga., 5 Pet. 1.

our territory and an act of hostility.' The treaties and laws of the United States contemplate such territory as completely separated from the states, and the Cherokee nations as a distinct community, and that 'in the executive, legislative and judicial branches of our government we have submitted, by the most solemn sanction, the existence of the Indians as a separate and distinct people, and as being vested with rights which constitute them a state or separate community' (49).

"The soil and the people within these limits are under the political control of the government of the United States. They were and always have been regarded as having a semi-independent position when they preserved their tribal relations, not as states, not as nations, not as possessed of the full attributes of sovereignty, but as a separate, dependent people, with the power of regulating their internal and social relations, and thus far not brought under the laws of the Union or of the state within whose limits they reside" (50).

§ 165. Mineral lands. Acquisition and disposition by the government. The English law holding that the right to all mines was in the Crown has little bearing upon the policy of the United States in relation to its mineral lands.

Upon the same principle that a title once possessed by the general government, can be divested only by the

49 Worcester v. Ga., 6 Pet. 515. See note in 8 Lawyers Co-operative Ed. 483.

50 U. S. v. Koagama, 118 U. S. 375, Cherokee Nation v. Kansas Ry., 135 U. S. 654. As to the authority of the states, Jackson v. Goodall, 20 John, 187.

grant of that government (51), it follows that the title to mineral lands can only be obtained from it under the provisions of acts of congress in relation thereto.

"No title from the United States to land known at the time of the sale to be valuable for its minerals of gold, silver, cinnabar or copper can be obtained under the pre-emption or homestead laws or the townsite laws, or in any other way than as prescribed by the laws specially authorizing the sale of such lands, except in the states of Michigan, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Missouri and Kansas. We say 'land known at the time to be valuable for its minerals,' as there are vast tracts of public land in which minerals of different kinds are found, but not in such quantity as to justify expenditures in the effort to extract them. It is not to such lands that the term 'mineral,' in the sense of the statute, is applicable.

"We therefore use the term 'known to be valuable at the time of sale,' to prevent any doubt being cast upon titles to lands afterwards found to be different in their mineral character from what was supposed when the entry of them was made and the patent issued" (52).

If the provisions of the law are violated patents may be vacated (53). The privilege of purchase is restricted to citizens or those declaring intentions to become such, but an alien can acquire and transmit title to a citizen (54).

51 Wilson's Works, 496-98; Jackson v. Frost, 5 Cow. 346; 3 Kent, Com. *378.

52 Deffeback v. Hawke, 115 U. S. 392. See also Col. C. & I. Co. v. United States, 123 U. S. 307; Davis v. Weibbold, 139 U. S. 507.

53 U. S. v. Culver, 52 Fed. 81.

54 North N. M. Co. v. Orient. 6 Sawyer, 299. A corporation may take, but where incorporation would amount to an evasion the courts

§ 166. Colonial possessions. Ancient policy and practice. The power and right to acquire and hold dependent territory has never been officially denied and has been frequently declared and exercised (55).

The policy of such a proceeding must always remain an open question to be determined by the exigencies of cases as they arise. General policies have been declared by administrations in most dogmatic form, but in most instances the act has been contrary to the word (56).

may go behind the fiction of corporate citizenship. Wheeler, 130 U. S. 630; Manuel v. Wulf, 152 U. S. 505.

See McKinley v.

55 For example, see Endleman v. U. S., 86 Fed. 456, and the Insular Tariff Cases.

56 Jefferson's example. Jefferson decried the policy of having dependent colonies, but he EXCEPTED Cuba, advocating its acquisition so soon as it could be done without dishonor. He said if it was to be sold, the United States had the pre-emption right of purchase; if it is to be conquered, we, the conqueror. But all this open and above board-no pretext, wars, no false claims, no fictitious quarrels, no annoying, no bullying, no forced sale. Jefferson's Letter, quoted in Benton's examination of the Dred Scott case, pp. 24, 25, note. Notwithstanding the protestation against a desire or intention to expand, the United States has never declined to acquire territory. Senator Benton paints the picture quite graphically. "Arizona has been acquired: fifty millions were offered to Mexico for her northern half, to include Monterey and Saltillo; a vast sum is now offered for Sonora and Sinaloa, down to Guaymas; Tehuantepec, Nicaragua, Panama, Darien, the Spanish part of San Domingo, Cuba, with islands on both sides of the tropical continent. Nor do we stop at the two Americas, their coasts and islands, extensive as they are; but circumvolving the terraqueous globe, we look wistfully at the Sandwich Islands, and on some gem in the Polynesian group, and plunging to the antipodes, pounce down upon Formosa in the Chinese sea. Such were the schemes of the last administration, and must continue, if its policy should continue. Over all these provinces, isthmuses, islands and ports, now free, our constitution must spread (if we acquire them, and the decision of the supreme court stands), overriding and overruling all anti-slavery in its place beyond the power of congress or the people there to prevent it." (1857). Benton's Ex. Dred Scott Dec., p. 29. Justice White refers to the attempt under Pierce's administration in 1854. Downs v. Bidwell, 182 U. S. at p. 300.

Modern doctrine and decision. The law is settled that the United States holds the conquered and ceded countries as dependent appurtenant property (57).

INSULAR POSSESSIONS, TERRITORIAL AND COLONIAL. The prophetic schemes spoken of by Senator Benton have been completely realized.

Hawaii was annexed in 1898, and a territorial government for those islands was established by an Act of Congress approved April 30, 1900. Porto Rico is another of our insular posessions, upon whom territorial government has been bestowed. The island was acquired first by conquest, and finally by the treaty with Spain. The Act approving civil government received the assent of the President April 12, 1900. Territorial government exists in these islands.

The Philippine Islands, also acquired from Spain, have not as yet been granted the privilege of local self government, but are governed under Acts of Congress by a Governor and Commissioners appointed by the President. Guam, another island, was ceded by Spain by the treaty of Paris, December, 1898. Tutuila, an island of the Samoan group, was recognized by a treaty with Great Britain and Germany in 1899 as a possession of the United States. Furnishing one of the finest harbors in the world, it constitutes a valuable and important possession of the United States.

Wake, and several other small islands in the direct route from Hawaii to Hong Kong, were taken possession

57 The Insular Tariff Cases, especially Downs v. Bidwell, 182 U. S. 244. Compare opinions of Justice White and Harlan. See for analogies 1 Cooley's Blackstone, 4th ed.* 107 and Notes.