Chapter 149. to amend an act establishing a court of private land claims and to provide for the settlement of private land claims in certain States and Territories. approved March third, eighteen hundred and ninety-one
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CHAP. 149.— An Act to amend an act establishing a court of private land claims and to provide for the settlement of private land claims in certain States and Territories. approved March third, eighteen hundred and ninety-one.February 21, 1893. *Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled*,Court of private land claims.Vol. 26, p. 854. That the act entitled “An act to establish a court of private land claims and to provide for the settlement of private land claims in certain States and Territories,” 471 approved March third, eighteen hundred and ninety-one, be, and the same is hereby, amended as follows, to wit:
Section sixteen of chapter five hundred and thirty-nine of the publicAdverse possession.Requirements modified. acts of the second session of the Fifty-first Congress is hereby amended by striking out the words “residing thereon as his home,” where they occur in the forty-first line of page eight hundred and sixty-one, volumeVol. 26, p. 861. twenty-six, United States Statutes. That section seventeen of said act be, and the same is hereby,Vol. 26, p. 862. amended so as to read as follows:
" “Sec. 17. That in the case of townships heretofore surveyed in theSurveyed townships. Territories of New Mexico, Arizona, and Utah, and the States of Colorado, Nevada, and Wyoming, all persons who, or whose ancestors, grantors, or their lawful successors in title or possession, became citizens of the United States by reason of the treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, or the terms of the Gadsden purchase, and who have been in the actual continuous adverse possession of tracts, not to exceed one hundredEntries by persons having 20 years adverse possession.Vol. 9, p. 922. and sixty acres each, for twenty years next preceding such survey, shall be entitled, upon making proof of such facts to the satisfaction of the register and receiver of the proper land district, and of the Com missioner of the General Land Office, upon such investigation as is provided for in section sixteen of this act, to enter without payment of purchase money, fees, or commissions such subdivisions, not exceedingLimit. one hundred and sixty acres, as shall include their said possessions.
“After a claim of the character described shall Have been filed as directedSurvey of irregular tracts. in section eighteen of this act, and it shall appear that a tract claimed as aforesaid is of such shape that the claimant can not readily secure his interests by an entry by legal subdivisions of the public surveys, the Commissioner of the General Land Office may cause such claim to be surveyed at the expense of the United States, but the deputy surveyor performing the work shall not be paid for his services more than five dollars per day in addition to his necessary expenses.
“Before commencing such a survey the deputy surveyor shall post,Proceedings to establish lines. in at least three prominent places in the township in which such claim is situated, a notice in both the English and Spanish languages, calling on all persons entitled to lands in said township under this section, to submit to him within a reasonable time proofs of their rights in the lands, by affidavit or otherwise. He shall then proceed to establish the lines of such possessions in the township as seem to him to be valid, properly connecting the lines thereof with the lines of public surveys, and he shall return the aforesaid proofs to the surveyor-generalApproval of surveys. with the field notes of such claims and possessions.
The surveyor-general shall then, upon his approval of said proofs and field notes of surveys, cause the said claim or claims to be platted, and numbered as a lot or lots of the section or sections in which such claim or claims are situated, and shall transmit a duplicate of the amended plat to the General Land Office and a triplicate thereof to the proper district land office, after which the land claimed as aforesaid may be entered as a lot or lots by the number or numbers designated upon the amended township plat: *Provided, however*, That no person shall be entitled to enter more*Proviso*.Limit. than one hundred and sixty acres in one or more tracts in his own right under the provisions of this section.
” " Section eighteen of said act is hereby amended by striking out the Time extended for filing claims.Vol. 26, p. 862. words “the passage of this act,” in the third and fourth lines of said section, and inserting in place thereof the words “the first day of December, eighteen hundred and ninety-two.” Approved, February 21, 1893.