been or not, by birth or otherwise, a member of any tribe of Indians within the territorial limits of the United States, without in any manner impairing or otherwise affecting the right of any- such Indian or tribal or other property."
It is the object of the first clause of the Thayer Bill to add to the grant of citizenship secured by the Dawes Bill an immediate guarantee to all Indians not citizens, and whether residing on or off a reservation, of the full protection of the law, and to enable them to sue and be sued in; all courts, and make contracts and engage in any trade or business, subject, however, to such reasonable restraint as is necessary to maintain order upon the reservation while the reservation system may continue. This seems to be an important and immediately feasible step towards putting the Indians as soon as possible under the same laws as the whites.
The second section is intended to provide qualification which in practice is found necessary, upon the strict rule of the Dawes Bill, that Indian contracts relating to their lands shall not be valid. As the law stands, if an Indian having accepted an allotment becomes aged or unable to work, or dies leaving infant heirs, his land cannot lawfully be leased nor any contract made to secure the value of its use or occupation.
The third object of the bill, declared by section 3, is the immediate extension over every reservation of the civil and criminal laws of the State or Territory in which it is situated, with saving clauses deemed necessary to provide against the contingency of local legislation unfavorable to Indians. This extension of law over the now lawless domain is the corner-stone of the bill. The previous provisions are incidental, connecting what has already been enacted with this great and vital declaration that hereafter no Indian and no part of the territory of the United States shall be deemed to be without the law.
Inasmuch as the considerations already explained render it utterly impracticable for a long time to come to rely upon State or Territorial courts for administering the law among these now lawless people, the next clauses of the bill provide for the creation of commissioners' courts, to have jurisdiction in all cases, civil and criminal, not capital, between Indians, or Indians on the- one side and whites upon the other, or in which Indians are concerned as prosecutors or accused, and to have jurisdiction, also, of dece-
