Samuel Freeman Miller

“ And men have been punished by death, by fine, and by imprisonment, of which the courts who so punished them had no jurisdiction, if the offences were not committed in the Indian country as established by law. These facts afford the strongest presumption that the Congress of the United States, and the judges who administered those laws, must have found in the definition of Indian country, in the act of 1834, such an adaptability to the altered circumstances of what was then Indian country as to enable them to ascertain what it was at any time since then. ”

“ If the section which we have given verbatim be read with a comma or semicolon inserted after the word 'State,' or if, without the insertion of any point there, we read it so as to apply the words, 'to which the Indian title has not been extinguished,' to all the region mentioned in the section, we have a criterion which will always distinguish what is Indian country from what is not, so long as the existing system governing our relations with Indians is continued. ”

“ It is a sufficient answer to the plea, that the defendants were subordinate officers acting under orders of a superior, to say that whatever may be the rule in time of war and in the presence of actual hostilities, military officers can no more protect themselves than civilians in time of peace by orders emanating from a source which is itself without authority. The authority of the commandant of the post in the case was precisely the same as the Indian agent or sub-agent, or superintendent ”