United States ex rel. Heirs to the Absentee Wyandotte Allotment of Van Pelt v. Weyerhaeuser Co.

OPINION

ROBERT E. JONES, District Judge:

The United States brings this action to regain title to an eighty-acre tract of land in Klamath County, Oregon for the heirs of an Indian allottee. The United States, on behalf of the heirs of the allottee, requests an ejectment of defendant, a return of the land, and damages for nearly fifty years of alleged wrongful occupancy by defendant. The court has jurisdiction under 28 U.S.C. § 1345.

In 1904, Congress passed a statute authorizing Absentee Wyandotte Indians to select 80 acres of agricultural lands from the surveyed public nonmineral domain. Under…