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Under treaty stipulation and the Act of Feb. 21, 1863, 487 patents had been issued. To discover and trace the patents has greatly increased the difficulty and labor of the task assigned me.  I am happy to state that I am able to account for all of them.

All those issued in 1871 were under English names only, and those the Indians generally forgot with promptness.  Several of these names, however, have remained in use.  To ascertain the true from the false I have compared the list of the patentees with the census book at the Agency; have gone over the entire list five times, with the older members of the tribe and those who had at the period of allottment acted as interpreters, and since my return to Washington, January 14, I have examined the census rolls of 1869,      at the second Auditor's office, U. S. Treasury; so that I am reasonably sure that no names reported as fictitious were ever in use among the people, or recognized by them.

Under instructions received from the Department, including the decisions of the Attorney General, the lands covered by these fictitious patents, were treated as tribal lands, sub=

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