Martin J. Sampson v. United States

This suit was brought to compel an Indian land allotment. 25 U.S.C. § 345 ; 28 U.S.C. § 1353 . The district court granted judgment for the defendant United States, and we affirm.

Procedural Background

Plaintiff Sampson is a Swinomish-Skagit Indian. Under the Treaty of Point Elliott, Jan. 22, 1855, 12 Stat. 927 , and the General Allotment Act of 1887, as amended, 25 U.S.C. §§ 331-58, members of his tribe were eligible to apply for individual allotments of land within the Swinomish Indian Reservation, located on an island in Puget Sound, Washington.

In 1926, Sampson applied for allotment of a certain 80 acres of tidelands bordering Swinomish Slough, a passage of water dividing part of the reservation from the mainland. The local superintendent favorably endorsed this application, but it was subsequently denied by the Commissioner of Indian Affairs. The administrative record included two reasons for the denial: (1) that the tidelands in question had not been included in a survey of land appropriate for allotment; and (2) that, since Swinomish Slough was non-navigable, the tidelands belonged to the adjacent riparian owners.

Sampson made subsequent inquires about this…