Stephen Johnson Field

“ The validity and effect of the appropriation do not depend upon its not being subjected afterwards to cancellation because of the omission of some particular duty of the party claiming its benefit.
In Witherspoon v. Duncan, 4 Wall. 210, 218, this court held that, if a party entitled by law to enter land at the land office does so, when the certificate of entry is given to him a contract is executed between him and the government, and thereafter the land ceases to be a part of the public domain. ”

“ From that time the land continued a part of the unappropriated public lands of the United States until the 2d of January, 1881, when the appellant, Mary Bardon, made her pre-emption settlement upon it, and afterwards followed up the settlement with all the steps required by law for the acquisition of the title. ”

“ Jackson, 13 Pet. 498, to which we have referred above, that land once legally appropriated to any purpose was thereby severed from the public domain, and a subsequent sale would not be construed to embrace it, though not specially reserved. And of the Indians' right of occupancy it said that this right, with the correlative obligation of the government to enforce it, negatived the idea that congress, even in the absence of any positive stipulation to protect the Osages, intended to grant their land to a railroad company, either absolutely or cum onere. ”

“ A special exception of it was not necessary, because the policy which dictated them confined them to land which congress could rightifully bestow without disturbing exisging relations and producing vexatious conflicts. ”