Page:U.S. Department of the Interior Annual Report 1880.djvu/78

76 be in the possession of those few persons who may own strips of land along the streams.

Attention is also called to the present faulty constitution of the Territorial courts, and the lack of proper definiteness in relation to their powers and the manner of their exercise. These courts are anomalous in character, and there appears never to have been a proper consideration of the peculiar circumstances and conditions under which they must act. The method of compelling the attendance of jurors and witnesses, of empaneling juries, the suitable compensation of marshals required to travel in pursuit of witnesses, jurors, and criminals, over great distances, as well as the present embarrassment attendant upon bringing witnesses from remote parts of the country, all these, with yet others, are matters concerning which the laws are faulty. The courts are of a mixed or twofold character, being at once Territorial and Federal. The organic acts of this Territory and of others declare that “the jurisdiction of the several courts herein provided for, both appellate and original, * * shall be as limited by law.” The law, as said before, is not only wanting in definiteness on this subject, leaving the courts ofttimes in doubt on the question of how to proceed in Federal cases, but is so far wanting as to leave the courts to such inconvenient and embarrassing use as they may find it possible to make of the Territorial law and its machinery. In fact what is wanted is not so much deflniteness in the matter of jurisdiction as a procedure, fixed by law of Congress, in accordance with which the Territorial courts may proceed when exercising the jurisdiction of circuit and district courts of the United States.

It is also suggested whether some better system should not be provided for determining cases on appeal from the district courts of the Territories. Under the present system one of the three judges who form the court of appeal is the person from whose judgment the appeal is taken. A court so constituted does not seem to supply the place of a supreme court.

A revision of all the laws relating to the Territories, with a view to secure greater harmony, consistency, and adaptation to the existing condition of affairs is recommended.

The governor reports a rapid extension of railroads in the Territory, and that prosperous towns are springing up upon all the lines of travel. The Northern Pacific Railroad Company has four hundred miles of road in operation in Dakota at present, and it is expected that it will be completed to the western line of the Territory during this year.

The governor estimates the white population of the Territory at the close of the fall of the present year at 150,000.

Advance in the development of the mining resources of the Territory is reported, and the opiuion is given that the Black Hills will yield large quantities of gold and silver for generations to come.