Page:United States Statutes at Large Volume 3.djvu/797



attached to the district south of Red river; and the register and receiver of the land office, in said district, are required to receive and record all written evidences of claim to land in said tract of country, derived from, and issued by, the Spanish government of Texas, prior to the twentieth day of December, one thousand eight hundred and three, according to the regulations, as to the granting of lands, the laws and ordinances of said government, and to receive and record all evidences of claim, founded on occupation, habitation and cultivation, designating particularly the time and manner in which each tract was occupied, inhabited, or cultivated, prior to, and on, the twenty-second of February, eighteen hundred and nineteen, and the continuance thereof subsequent to that time, with the extend of the improvement on each tract, and to receive and record such evidence as may be produced, touching the performance of the conditions required to be performed by any holder of any grant, concession, warrant, or order of survey, or other written evidence of claim, and on which the validity of such claim may have depended under the government from which it emanated, and to receive and record all evidence of fraud in obtaining or issuing the written evidence of such claims, and of their abandonment or forfeiture.

. And be it further enacted, That the register and receiver, as aforesaid, shall transmit to the Secretary of the Treasury, a complete record of all the claims presented to them under this act, and the evidence appertaining to each claim, and shall also make out and transmit, to the Secretary of the Treasury, an abstract containing the whole number of claims, in four distinct classes, the first of which shall contain a specification of the nature and extent of complete titles, the time when, and by whom, issued, and to whom, with the date of any transfer, the name of the person transferring, and to whom transferred, and where the conditions of such grant or patent have been complied with; the second shall contain all claims founded on written evidence and not embraced in the first class, and where the conditions on which the perfection thereof into complete titles may have depended, according to the laws and ordinances of the Spanish government, are shown to have been complied with: the third class shall consist of claims founded on habitation, occupation, or cultivation, previously to twenty-second of February, one thousand eight hundred and nineteen, and in the manner which would have entitled the claimants to a title under the government exercising the sovereign power over that tract of country, and which, in their opinion, ought to be confirmed; the fourth class shall consist of those claims, which, in the opinion of the register and receiver, ought not to be confirmed: Provided, That nothing contained in this act shall be considered as a pledge on the part of Congress to confirm any claim thus reported.

. And be it further enacted, That it shall be the duty of the register and receiver aforesaid, after suitable notice to claimants, of the time and place of their meeting, and the object thereof, be given by them, to hold their session at Natchitoches, so long as may be necessary for the performance of the duties herein prescribed, and shall be allowed the sum of five hundred dollars each, as a full compensation for the services required to be performed by this act.

, March 3, 1823.

Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, That the following sums be, and the same are hereby, respectively, appropriated for the service of the year one thousand eight hundred and twenty-three; that is to say: