Morgan v. Fowler
Morgan v. Fowler
Opinion of the Court
the 3d article, and stands solitary and disconnected with any other claim, in or out of the treat}’.
The lessor of the plaintiff’s claim is very different; h\s is a life estate to himself, and a reservation in fee simple to the children; his claim is founded on, and supported by divers considerations, as the head of an Indian family, as having a residence on the east side of the Mississippi river on lands surrendered, &c. to the United States, and as having a wish to become a citizen of the United States; these, with the registry of his name in the office of the Cherokee agent, constitute his title under the 8th article of the treaty of 1817, recognized, continued and extended by the 2d and 7th articles of the treaty of 1819. Nothing therefore appears in the treaties themselves, showing that the one of these claims destroyed the other, or that there is any inconsistency in their both standing as valid claims in law. They are different in kind, and dependent on different articles of the treaties between which there is no connection. The 3d article of the treaty of 1819, which gives the reservation to the wife, has no connection with the 2d and 7th articles of the same treaty, and the 8th article of the treaty of 1817, which gives the reservation to the husband.
But the treaty is travelled out of in the charge of the cótirt, and the fact of the wife’s gift in fee is brought forward and presented asa bar to the claim of the lessor of the plaintiff. If we c onfine our view to the treaty, the connection of husband and wife no where appears; the gift here is to Margaret Morgan, without notice of the civil relation of wife, and it is only by evidence dehors the treaty, that we learn the Margaret Morgan therein mentioned, sustains this relation to the plaintiff in error. If the civil union of these parlies, and other matters personal, could be looked at through any other medium than the provisions and stipulations of the treaty itself, the. information so acquired would have a tendency to strengthen and support the lessor of the plaintiff’s claim, instead of weakening, or as it is argued, wholly destroying it.
The witness, Lowry, tells us, that the lessor of the
' Two other points are urged by the defendant’s counsel, as repulsive of the plaintiff in error’s claim. One of them is, that under the circumstances of the case, the lessor of the plaintifi in error was not the head of an Indian family, within the meaning of the treaties of 1817 and 1819.
These circumstances, by the testimony of Mr Lowry, are, that the lessor of the plaintiff in error, was married to his wife Margaret, an Indian girl, before the Creek war; that after this intermarriage, he resided with his wife in what is now the ceded territory, at the time of Jackson’s treaty at the Cherokee agency, north east of the Hiwassee river; that he continued to live near the Hiwassee, in what is now the ceded territory, until shortly before Calhoun’s treaty, when he was appointed by the Cherokee Nation, as one of their delegates, to make what is called Calhoun’s treaty, in 1819; that he went on to Washington City in that service, and had considerable agency in bringing about Calhoun’s treaty.
Again: suppose the removal of the lessor of the plaintiff with his family to Knoxville in the fall of 1818, and residence there of his family until after the treaty was made, the lessor of the plaintiff being in the meantime a ■Cherokee delegate, and acting as such at Washington City in making the treaty, and afterwards returning with his family to the ceded territory, and settling therein on an improvement, which he did in December 1819; and let it be admitted further, that this absence amounted to a non-residence under the treaty in him as the head of an In
The verdict in this case must be set aside, and the judgment rendered thereon reversed, and the cause sent down to the court from whence it came, for a new trial to be had therein, according to the law as held in this opinion.
Judgment reversed.
Reference
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