Pueblo Lands Act

What happened

In 1913 the Supreme Court decided United States v. Sandoval. New Mexico had been admitted under an enabling act that treated lands owned or occupied by the Pueblo Indians as Indian country. The Court held that Congress's authority was "sufficiently comprehensive to enable Congress to apply the prohibition" on liquor to the lands of the Pueblos. That meant federal Indian law applied to Pueblo lands.

The Act of June 7, 1924, titled "An Act To quiet the title to lands within Pueblo Indian land grants," was Congress's answer. It directed the Attorney General to file suit in federal court in New Mexico, "in its sovereign capacity as guardian of said Pueblo Indians," to settle adverse claims. It also created a three-member Pueblo Lands Board: the Secretary of the Interior, the Attorney General, and a third member appointed by the President.

The board's duty was to investigate and report, by metes and bounds, the lands within the Pueblo grants "title to which the said board shall find not to have been extinguished." It was told to leave out claims of non-Indians who held and occupied land by adverse possession as the Act defined it.

The Act also provided money to buy back what had been lost. A later section appropriated funds for "lands and water rights to replace those which have been lost to said pueblo or to said Indians."

Good to know. The link to the Sandoval case is this site's framing; the Act's text does not mention Sandoval.

Summarized with AI assistance from 5 sources and checked against their words; not yet reviewed by historians or by the nations. Report an error