which a reservation was set off, of a considerable extent of country between the point where any road crossing the mountains near Diamond peak must strike the plains at their eastern base and Warner's Mountain. The right of the government to lay out roads through the reservation was conceded by the Indians, but it was not in contemplation that the government should have the power to grant any of the reservation lands to any company constructing such a road; the treaty having been made before the company was formed. Nevertheless, as the survey of the reservation lands proceeded, which was urged forward to enable the company to secure its lands, the odd sections along the line of the military road where it crossed the reservation were approved to the state to the extent of over 93,000 acres. The Indians, or their agents, held, very properly, that their lands, secured to them by treaty previous to the survey of the military road, were not public lands from which the state or the company could select; and also that the state would have no right to violate the conditions of the treaty by bringing settlers within the limits of the reservation. By an act amendatory of the first act granting the lands to the state, congress indemnified the state, and through the state the company, by allowing the deficit to be made up from other odd sections not reserved or appropriated within six miles on each side of the road.[1] The Oregon Central Military Road Company, after doing what was necessary to secure their grant, and finding it inconvenient to be taxed as a private corporation on so large an amount of property that had never been made greatly productive, sold its lands to the Pacific Land Company of San Francisco, in 1873,
- ↑ Ind. Aff. Rept, 1874, 75; Cong. Globe, 1866-67, pt iii., app. 179, 39th cong. 2d sess. It would seem from the fact that in 1878-9 a bill was before congress asking for a float on public lands in exchange for those embraced within the reservation and claimed by the O. C. M. R. Co., that the bill of 1866 was not intended to indemnify for these lands, though the language is such as to lead to that understanding. The bill of 1878-9 did not pass; and if the first is not an indemnity bill, then the Indian lands are in jeopardy. S. F. Chadwick, in Historical Correspondence, MS.; Ashland Tidings, Feb. 14, 1879; S. F. Bulletin, July 11, 1872.
