Opinion

Osage Nation of Indians v. United States

  • 97 F. Supp. 381
  • 119 Ct. Cl. 592
  • 1951 U.S. Ct. Cl. LEXIS 49
Court
United States Court of Claims
Filed
May 1, 1951
Status
Published
Author
Whitaker
On the bench
Whitaker, Jones, Littleton, Madden, Howell
Cited by
41 cases

The opinion

WHITAKER, Judge

(dissenting).

I am not persuaded that there is no “substantial evidence” to support the findings of the Indian Claims Commission. I agree with the Chief Judge in what he said in his concurring opinion relative to the weight to be given the findings of this Commission.

The defendant bought some eight hundred sixty-five thousand acres of land for 34 cents an acre. Over a period of about 12 years it sold about half of the acreage, and the balance in the next 20 years. These sales were on a four-year installment basis at $1.25 an acre. They were of 160-acre tracts. One hundred sixty acres is about one five-thousandth of the total acreage, and for each sale of one of these small plots the defendant got only four times what it paid for the plot on the basis of the purchase price of the whole 865,000 acres. A real estate man who buys a large tract of land and subdivides it expects to sell the individual lots for many times what he paid for them.

If the Indians had put their lands up for sale as a whole or in parcels I doubt that they could have done so well.

This is a copy of a public record, reproduced as it was published. It is not legal advice, and it may not be the version a court would rely on. Check the official source before you cite it.

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