Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly volume 16.djvu/35



MISSION CLAIM TO THE DALLES 27

by it; and (3) so as to include its improvements with 640 acres south of the bluff in substantially a square form. Plats of these surveys the second one containing 87 acres were for- warded to the Commissioner by the surveyor general with his decision [rendered February 2, 1861] that the society was not entitled to any portion of the premises as a missionary station. Neither of these 'plats of survey' were approved by the sur- veyor general in the sense of the statute, because they were each made upon a hypothesis that the society occupied the premises or some portion of them as a mission station on August 14, 1848, which he found not to be true. This de- cision was affirmed on appeal February 7, 1863, by the com- missioner. From there the cause was appealed to the Depart- ment of the Interior, where it rested till 1875, when it was finally reversed. After the decision of the Secretary of the Interior, the commissioner wrote to the surveyor general ad- vising him of such decision and directing him to furnish that office with a 'certified diagram of the claim of said; Society' as confirmed by the same. In obedience to this direction the surveyor general on June 17, 1875, certified to the commis- sioner a diagram of the first of the three surveys as being a plat of the survey of the Methodist mission claim at The Dalles, and upon this the patent was issued as appears there- from July 9, 1875.

As I have stated, the case was taken before Judge Deady in 1879, who again reversed the decision and ruled that this patent was void because it was not issued upon a 'plat of survey thereof approved by the surveyor general, but upon survey made by the agent of the mission in June, 1850."

"Now, in June, 1850, the agent of the defendant went upon the ground and surveyed and marked the boundaries of the claim as he understood them to be, and in 1854 the Rev. Thomas H. Pearne, its agent, notified the surveyor general of the territory of the claim of the defendant thereto," and this is the survey on which the Secretary of the Interior issued the patent, and is also the same as was described in No. 1 of the survey of 1860 (as claimed by the Society).