Edward Douglass White

“ It follows that, even if the reports and official documents to which the findings refer were legally inadmissible to show want of amity, we could not hold that there was no legal evidence supporting the conclusion that amity did not exist, since all the evidence which the court states it considered on this subject is not in the record. But the official reports in question were legally competent on the issue of amity. It is conceded that if competent they were relevant, since it is admitted they tended to establish that the tribe was not in amity when the depredation was committed. ”

“ These provisions express the manifest purpose of congress to empower the court of claims to receive and consider any document on file in the departments of the government, or in the courts, having a bearing upon any material question arising in the consideration of any particular claim for compensation for Indian depredation, the court to allow the documents such weight as they were entitled to have. ”

“ This legal conclusion was not disputed in the argument at bar, but it was contended that this court will, as a matter of law, where the record enables it to do so, determine for itself whether the ultimate facts found below are supported by any evidence whatever, and that it also will determine whether the ultimate facts were solely deduced by the court below from evidence which was wholly illegal. ”