of things. It is not necessarily prospective, and does not impose limitations upon the legislative power with regard to the naturalization or future adoption of aliens as citizens. Under the policy of the Cherokees citizenship and communal ownership were distinct things. The citizen who annually received an annuity derived from the communal fund held by the United States, and the citizen who never received a dollar from the fund or never so much as thought of receiving it, formed a concrete object lesson in constitutional law not easily effaced from the common mind."

Section 5 of the constitution of 1839 was as follows:

"SEC. 5. No person shall be eligible to a seat in the National Council, but a free Cherokee male citizen, who shall have attained the age of twenty-five years.

"The descendants of Cherokee men by all free women, except the African race, whose parents may have been living together as man and wife according to the customs of this Nation, shall be entitled to all the rights and privileges of this Nation, as well as the posterity of the Cherokee women by all free men. No person who is of negro or mulatto parentage, either by the father's or mother's side, shall be eligible to hold any office of profit, honor or trust under this government.

"SEC. 6. The electors and members of the National Council shall in all cases, except those of treason, felony or breach of the peace, be privileged from arrest during their attendance at elections and at the National Council in going to and returning."

The amendment of section 5, in 1866, reads:

"SEC. 5. No person shall be eligible to a seat in the National Council but a male citizen of the Cherokee Nation, who shall have attained the age of twenty-five years and who shall have been a bona fide resident of the district in which he may be elected at least six months immediately preceding such election. All native-born Cherokees, all Indians and whites legally members of the Nation by adoption, and all freedmen

who have been liberated by voluntary act of their former owners, or by law, as well as free colored persons who were in the country at the commencement of the rebellion and are residents therein, or who may return within six months from the nineteenth day of July, 1866, and their descendants who reside within the limits of the Cherokee Nation, shall be taken and deemed to be citizens of the Cherokee Nation."

We cannot accept the view that this amendment amounted to a grant of property rights, or operated to enlarge the authority of the National Council in respect of the readmission of former members of the Nation.

The amendment (found in that part of the Constitution in respect to officers and elections) must be taken as a whole, and related to eligibility to a seat in the National Council and not to property rights. The contention that the words "citizens of the Cherokee Nation" should be construed as relating to the constitutional provision of 1839 that the lands of the Nation should be common property, is without merit in view of the provisions themselves.

By section 2 of article 1 of the constitution of 1839 it was provided that "whenever any citizen shall remove with his effects out of the limits of this Nation, and becomes a citizen of any other government, all his rights and privileges as a citizen of this Nation shall cease: provided, nevertheless, that the National Council shall have power to readmit, by law, to all the rights of citizenship, any such person or persons who may, at any time, desire to return to the Nation, on memorializing the National Council for such readmission." By its terms this referred to those who had been citizens, and their readmission gave no rights not originally possessed, and this was true under the amendments of 1866. Many special Cherokee laws demonstrate that the Council did not venture to assume nor desire to assume the power to impart to the white adopted citizen other than civil and political rights.

For instance, the acts of 1878, readmitting Greenway and his children, and Allen and his family "to all the rights and

privileges of citizens of the Cherokee Nation" specifically provided that no rights should be acquired except such as attach to white men, "adopted citizens of the Cherokee Nation."

The acts relating to intermarriage with whites contained many restrictions, but by the act in respect of the intermarriage of Cherokees with other Indians no such restrictions were imposed. Cherokee act of Nov. 27, 1880. That act provided that the marriage should be contracted according to the law regulating marriages between "our own citizens," and declared that such Indian "shall be and is hereby deemed a Cherokee to all intents and purposes and entitled to the rights. of other Cherokees." There is no such language in the acts relating to intermarried whites.

The treaty of 1866, between the United States and the Cherokee Nation, provided as to the former slaves, that they should be free and they "and their descendants shall have all the rights of native Cherokees."

Article 15 of the same treaty, after providing for the settlement of friendly Indians amongst the Cherokees and the manner in which the latter shall be paid therefor, then stipulates "that they shall be incorporated into and thereafter remain a part of the Cherokee Nation on equal terms in every respect with native Cherokees." When the Delawares were about to be moved into the Cherokee country as friendly Indians, it was stipulated in the agreement that "on the fulfilment by the Delawares of the foregoing stipulations, all the members of the tribe registered as above provided, shall become members of the Cherokee Nation, with the same rights and immunities and the same participation (and no other) in the national funds as native Cherokees and the children thereafter born of such Delawares so incorporated into the Cherokee Nation shall in all respects be regarded as native Cherokees." Later when an agreement was made with the Shawnees, after the amount of money to be paid was provided for, the rights of Shawnees were defined as follows: "and that

the said Shawnees shall be incorporated into and ever after remain a part of the Cherokee Nation on equal terms in every respect and with all the privileges and immunities of native citizens of said Nation."

These intermarried whites show no grant of equal rights as members of the Cherokee Nation by treaty or otherwise, nor have they (excepting the two individuals heretofore referred to) paid any sum into the Nation's treasury for a pro rata share of its money and lands.

The Delawares, the Shawnees and the Freedmen acquired their property rights by the express words of treaties, but the intermarried whites cannot point out any such in their favor. Doubtless because of this they have heretofore asserted no claim, although the Cherokee courts were open to them to do so, and have allowed repeated payments of money to be made to every other citizen without question.

The distinction between different classes of citizens was recognized by the Cherokees in the differences in their intermarriage law, as applicable to the whites and to the Indians of other tribes; by the provision in the intermarriage law that a white man intermarried with an Indian by blood acquires certain rights as a citizen, but no provision that if he marries a Cherokee citizen not of Indian blood he shall be regarded as a citizen at all; and by the provision that if, once having married an Indian by blood, he marries the second time a citizen not by blood, he loses all of his rights as a citizen. And the same distinction between citizens as such and citizens with property rights has also been recognized by Congress in enactments relating to other Indians than the Five Civilized Tribes. Act August 9, 1888, 25 Stat. 392, c. 818; act May 2, 1890, 26 Stat. 96, c. 182; act June 7, 1897, 30 Stat. 90, c. 3.

In Whitmire v. Cherokee Nation, 30 C. Cl. 138, 152, the Court of Claims said: "Here it should be noted that when the treaty was made there had long been a peculiar class of citizens in the Cherokee country-white men who became

citizens by intermarriage." And, after quoting the proviso to section 75, art. 15, of the Cherokee Code of 1874, the court added: "The idea, therefore, existed both in the minds and in the laws of the Cherokee people, that citizenship did not necessarily extend to or invest in the citizen a personal or individual interest in what the constitution termed the 'common property,' 'the lands of the Cherokee Nation.'"

In Stephens v. Cherokee Nation, 174 U. S. 445, 488, this court, in respect of certain acts of Congress, observed:

"It may be remarked that the legislation seems to recognize, especially the act of June 28, 1898, a distinction between admission to citizenship merely and the distribution of property to be subsequently made, as if there might be circumstances under which the right to a share in the latter would not necessarily follow from the concession of the former."

Referring to this, the Court of Claims said in its opinion in the present case, 40 C. Cl. 411, 442:

"It cannot be supposed for a moment that Congress intended by this legislation to take away from some of the Cherokee people property which was constitutionally theirs or to confer upon white citizens property which they were not legally entitled to have. The term 'citizens' in these statutes of the United States must be construed to mean those citizens who were constitutionally or legally entitled to share in the allotment of the lands."

The doctrine is familiar that the language of a statute is to be interpreted in the light of the particular matter in hand and the object sought to be accomplished as manifested by other parts of the act, and the words used may be qualified by their surroundings and connections.

In accepting the conclusion of the Court of Claims in this regard we, nevertheless, deem it proper to somewhat consider the congressional legislation relied on by the claimants.

The act of Congress of July 1, 1902, 32 Stat. 716, c. 1375, ratified by the Cherokee Nation, August 7, 1902, and often called the Cherokee agreement, contained these sections: