Melville Fuller

“ The distinction between different classes of citizens was recognized by the Cherokees in the differences in their intermarriage law, as applicable to the whites and to the Indians of other tribes; by the provision in the intermarriage law that a white man intermarried with an Indian by blood acquires certain rights as a citizen, but no provision that if he marries a Cherokee citizen not of Indian blood he shall be regarded as a citizen at all ”

“ No person shall be eligible to a seat in the National Council but a free Cherokee male citizen, who shall have attained to the age of twenty-five years.
'The descendants of Cherokee men by all free women, except the African race, whose parents may have been living together as man and wife according to the customs and laws of this Nation, shall be entitled to all the rights and privileges of this Nation, as well as the posterity of Cherokee women by all free men. ”

“ For the purpose of expediting the enrolment of the Cherokee citizens and the allotment of lands as herein provided, the said Commission shall, from time to time, and as soon as practicable, forward to the Secretary of the Interior lists upon which shall be placed the names of those persons found by the Commission to be entitled to enrolment. The lists thus prepared, when approved by the Secretary of the Interior, shall constitute a part and parcel of the final roll of citizens of the Cherokee tribe, upon which allotment of land and distribution of other tribal property shall be made. ”

“ Not a single word of the act intimates that these intermarried persons have or are to have any interest in the property of the Nation, and to hold that because the act of 1902 declares that white persons intermarrying after 1895 should acquire no property rights the Indians, in accepting the act, conceded property rights to all who intermarried prior thereto, would put a construction on the act utterly inconsistent with the settled rule that, as between the whites and the Indians, the laws are to be construed most favorably to the latter. ”

“ The intermarried whites have not acquired the right to share in the lands or funds of the Cherokee Nation by grant in express terms, but that right is claimed in virtue of an alleged citizenship in the Cherokee Nation derived from intermarriage under Cherokee laws. ”

“ Any citizen of the Nation could use the public domain, and it is not asserted that the intermarried whites failed to obtain their share of such use, but because they have enjoyed that benefit, free from tax or burden, is no reason for giving them a share in the lands and vested funds, which has never been granted to them, and for which they have never paid. ”

“ The Nation, under the treaties, possessed the right of local self-government with authority to make such laws as it deemed necessary for the government and protection of persons and property within the country, belonging to its people, 'or such persons as have connected themselves with them.' Treaty, Dec. ”

“ The concluding words of § 21, 'with such intermarried white persons as may be entitled to citizenship under Cherokee laws,' emphatically indicate that Congress had the Indian citizen in mind in all that went before and limited enrolment of white persons to such as might be entitled to citizenship under Cherokee laws. ”