Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.

“ For every reason we have examined the facts with anxiety to give full weight to any argument by which the plaintiff's pious wishes might be carried out. But if it is obvious that the bill could not be amended so as to state a case within the jurisdiction of the court, the judgment must be affirmed or the appeal dismissed, as the defect of jurisdiction turns out to be peculiar to courts of the United States as such, or one common to all courts. ”

“ The government cannot be supposed to have abandoned merely for a moment and for a secondary matter its general attitude toward the Indians as wards over whom and whose property it retained unusual powers, so long as they remained set apart from the body of the people. The very treaty of 1867, cited in the bill, providing for the resumption of the tribal mode of life by the Wyandottes, shows that the United States assumed still to possess such unusual powers. ”

“ We are driven to the conclusion that even if the suit is not to be regarded as a suit against the United States, within the authority of the cases cited (202 U.S. 60 and 473) , the United States retained the same power that it would have had if the Wyandotte tribe had continued in existence after the treaty of 1855; that the only rights in and over the cemetery were tribal rights; and that the plaintiff cannot establish a legal or equitable title of the value of $2,000, or indeed any right to have the cemetery remain undisturbed by the United States. ”