Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly volume 16.djvu/38



30 MRS. R. S. SHACKLEFORD

He also says that the fact of the claim being advanced by a powerful and popular religious organization for whose good will and favor the average congressman in Oregon and else- where has a lively regard, may not have been without its effect on the result, and continues that "in making provision for payment of this claim, cannot, under the circumstances, have any effect to invest the defendant with the title to the premises," and also rules "that all that was done amounted only to a release, and was not an admission by the United States, to whom the release was made, that the releasor the defendant ever had any right to either land or improvements, but only that it asserted some kind of claim thereto which it was deemed expedient to satisfy and extinguish. But since this payment of $24,000, there is no longer cause for regarding it as even morally entitled to anything from the public on ac- count of its missionary operations at The Dalles."

"The conclusions of the court is that the defendant did not occupy the premises on August 14, 1848, as a missionary sta- tion or otherwise and that it was not deterred from so doing by the danger from Indian hostilities, but voluntarily abandoned the same before September 10, 1847, without any intention or expectation of reoccupying it under any circumstances, and therefore the patent to the defendant was wrongfully issued; and the decree of the court will be that the defendant be declared a trustee for the several plaintiffs herein for so much of the premises described in the patent as is claimed by them in their several suits, and that the defendant, within ninety- days, by a sufficient conveyance or conveyances, containing proper covenants against its own acts, to be approved by the master of this court, release to the said plaintiffs accordingly all right and title to said premises, and that it pay the plain- tiffs their costs and expenses of suit. (Signed) James K. Kelly and N. H. Gates for plaintiffs ; Rufus Mallory and John C. Cartwright for the defendants."

Thus ended the suits numbered 390, 391 and 392, but it was appealed from the Circuit Court of the United States for the District of Oregon to the Supreme Court of the United