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Tribal Status of Petitioners
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INDIAN
TRIBAL STATUS OF PETITIONERS Now
what is the status of petitioners? Are they freedmen, or are they in law and in
fact citizens by blood of the Choctaw and Chickasaw nations? They are eligible
and have been ever since the adoption of the treaty of 1866 abolishing slavery
to hold any office under the Choctaw or Chickasaw governments. Their eligibility
is so declared by the Choctaw and Chickasaw constitutions. Article
7, section 2, of the Choctaw constitution, provides as follows: No
person shall be principal chief, subordinate chief, senator, or representative
unless he be a free male citizen of the Choctaw Nation and a lineal descendant
of the Choctaw or Chickasaw race. The
Chickasaw constitution provides: Article
2, section 3:
All free persons of the age of 19 years and upward who are by birth or
adoption members of the Chickasaw tribe of Indians, and not otherwise
disqualified, and who shall have resided six months immediately next preceding
any election in the Chickasaw Nation, shall be deemed qualified electors under
the authority of this constitution. Article
4, section 3:
No person shall be a representative unless he be a Chickasaw by birth or
adoption. Article
5, section 3:
No person shall be eligible to the office of governor unless he shall
have attained the age of 30 years, and shall have been a resident of the nation
for one year next preceding his election. Neither shall any person except a
Chickasaw by birth or an adopted member of the tribe at the time of the adoption
of the constitution be eligible to the office of governor. We
respectfully contend that these persons are Choctaw and Chickasaw citizens by
blood; that they are lineal descendants by blood of the identical persons to
whom the grant was originally made; that they acquired their citizenship in the
Choctaw and Chickasaw
nations by descent from recognized citizens by blood thereof, by birth in the
nations, and by continuous and. uninterrupted residence therein and allegiance
thereto. These are the essential elements of citizenship, for can it be denied
that the child of a recognized citizen of a nation, born in the nation, and
owing its allegiance to that nation and to no other is a stranger to its parents
allegiance and par citizenship? This is the fundamental and universal law of all
organized societies and States and essential to their continued existence as
such. In no State and by no Government has it ever been held that the offspring
of a citizen is a born stranger to the parents’ allegiance, outcast from the
parent’s civil state, and citizen of no other State. These
people are the lineal descendants of the very persons who ratified the treaty of
1830, under which the Choctaw Nation became seized and possessed of the lands
now being allotted in severalty. |
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