1. Surveys under confirmations of Spanish titles in the Upper
Louisiana country are, in regard to their correctness, within the
jurisdiction of the commissioner of the General Land Office, and
that officer has power to adjudge the question of accuracy
preliminary to the issuing of a patent.
2. The Secretary of the Interior has the power of supervision
and appeal in all matters relating to the General Land Office, and
that power is coextensive with the authority of the commissioner to
adjudge.
3. The Secretary, in the exercise of his supervisory powers, may
lawfully set aside a survey made under a confirmed Spanish grant,
order another to be made, and issue a patent upon it.
4. Where the construction of the acts of Congress defining the
powers of the Secretary of the Interior is drawn in question in a
state court and the decision is against the title set up by
maintaining the validity of the Secretary's decision, this Court
has jurisdiction to revise the case on writ of error.
This case came up on writ of error to the Supreme court of the
State of Missouri. It was commenced in the St. Louis Land Court,
equity side, by petition and summons, agreeably to the Code of
Missouri. The plaintiff, John Magwire, claimed four arpents by four
of land lying in the County of St. Louis, of which the defendants,
Mary L. Tyler and others, were wrongfully in possession. The
petition prayed a decree for title in them -- for possession -- for
an account of profits and an injunction against waste. The
defendants answered at length,
Page 66 U. S. 196
denying the material facts set forth in the petition and
asserting that they were rightfully in possession. The land court
heard the cause, found the facts specially, and made a decree in
favor of the defendants dismissing the petition, which was affirmed
afterwards by the supreme court of the state, and the plaintiff
took this writ of error. What the facts in dispute were and how
they were found by the court of original jurisdiction will appear
by reference to the opinion of MR. JUSTICE CATRON. The defendants
in error moved to dismiss the writ for want of jurisdiction, and
the Court heard the argument on that motion, and upon the errors
assigned by the plaintiff in the judgment of the state court at the
same time.
Page 66 U. S. 198
MR. JUSTICE CATRON.
In 1794, Joseph Brazeau had granted to him, by the Lieutenant
Governor of Upper Louisiana, a tract of land, four arpents in front
by twenty arpents deep, which extended in a N.N.W. course, from the
foot of the hill where stands the Grange de Terre, ascending to the
vicinity of Stony creek, bounded on one side by the bank of the
Mississippi, on the opposite side by the public domain, and on the
southern side the tract was bounded by the concession to the free
mulattress Esther, made in 1793.
In 1798, Brazeau sold and conveyed to Labeaume part of his
concession. The deed includes four arpents,
"to be taken from the foot of the hill or mound commonly called
the Grange de Terre, by twenty arpents in depth, bounded by the
Rocky Branch on the extremity opposite the said mound, reserving to
myself says Brazeau's deed four arpents of land, to be taken at the
foot of said mound, in the southern part of the aforesaid tract,
selling only sixteen arpents in depth to the said Labeaume."
In 1799, Labeaume applied to the governor and got his tract of 4
by 16 arpents enlarged, including the land conveyed to him by
Brazeau, extending north to the Rocky Branch, calling for twenty
arpents in depth. This enlarged tract the governor ordered Soulard
to survey for Labeaume, and to put him into possession which the
surveyor did in April, 1799.
Labeaume applied to have his claim confirmed by the board of
commissioners, and in 1810 it was confirmed for 356 arpents, and at
the same time, acting on Brazeau's concession of 1794, the board
confirmed to him his 4 by 4 arpents, adjoining Labeaume's tract on
the south.
The board ordered that Labeaume's concession should be
Page 66 U. S. 199
surveyed in conformity to the order of survey made by the
lieutenant governor, and that Brazeau's tract of sixteen arpents
"should be surveyed, agreeably to a reserve made in a sale from
Joseph Brazeau to Louis Labeaume." This survey was to be made
conformably to the reservation in the deed, and that reservation
was at the foot of the mound.
Patents were ordered to be issued to the parties respectively,
but owing to litigation before the department of public lands and
in the courts of justice between the parties claiming the
reservation, and the proper mode of surveying the tract, was not
settled till 1852, when the surveys were approved and patents
issued to each of the parties locating the southern boundary of
Brazeau's claim at the foot of the mound, and the opposite line,
adjoining the southern boundary of Labeaume, four arpents further
north, at an old ditch. Brazeau's representatives refused to accept
the patent for the sixteen arpents and caused it to be recalled at
the General Land Office. His claim therefore stands before the
court as it existed in 1810, when the board of commissioners
confirmed it as valid.
The assignees of Brazeau brought an action of ejectment to
recover possession of 4 by 4 arpents above Labeaume's southern
line, and within his survey, but this Court held that the power to
survey and fix definite boundaries and issue a patent for Brazeau's
tract was a sovereign power reserved to the executive branch of the
government, and that a court of justice had no jurisdiction to
locate the claim.
West v.
Cochran, 17 How. 403.
The unsuccessful party then filed his bill in a state circuit
court, and insists that equity can do what was declared could not
be done at law, on the assumption that the court only decided in
the former case that Brazeau's incipient but equitable title would
not sustain an action of ejectment.
In the year 1817, "by authority of the United States and under
the direction of the Surveyor General for the District of Illinois
and Missouri," the tract of land confirmed to Brazeau was surveyed
by Joseph C. Brown, a deputy surveyor, conjointly with Labeaume's
enlarged tract. The surveyor certifies that he had
"surveyed for Louis Labeaume two tracts in
Page 66 U. S. 200
one -- the one confirmed in his own name for 356 arpents; the
other, under Joseph Brazeau, for four arpents"
-- together 360 arpents, equal to 306 1/4 acres.
The courses and distances of the lines are given. At one of the
corners the call is for a stone at the mouth of an old ditch, the
lower corner of the survey on the river. The next line runs
westwardly with the ditch. This survey was returned to the surveyor
general's office and duly approved shortly after it was made. It
purported to include Brazeau's tract of sixteen arpents, and, of
course, it was located in the southeast corner of the survey.
When this survey was presented to the recorder of land titles to
obtain a patent certificate, he refused to issue one because both
tracts were included in one survey, whereas the recorder held that
the confirmation certificates required separate surveys. Thus the
matter stood till 1833, when Brown made another survey of
Labeaume's tract, maintaining the ditch as the southern boundary
and throwing off on the west a surplus to reduce the tract to the
quantity confirmed to Labeaume.
The representatives of Brazeau claimed to own the tract of four
by four arpents north of the ditch, as indicated in Brown's survey
of 1817, and a contest was carried on before the Department of
Public Lands as to the proper location of Brazeau's claim,
according to his confirmation, for nearly twenty years. Finally the
Secretary of the Interior ordered that the tracts should be
surveyed separately -- set the surveys of Brown of 1817 and 1833
aside -- and ordered that Brazeau's claim should be surveyed south
of the ditch and next to the mound and that Labeaume's tract should
be located north of the ditch.
The representatives of Labeaume hold the land in the
southeasterly corner of Brown's survey, and this is the land the
bill prays may be decreed to the complainant -- first on the
assumption that the confirmation certificate locates it there, and
secondly that there was no authority in the Secretary of the
Interior Department to set the survey of 1817 aside.
Labeaume's survey of 1833 was merely a reformation of the survey
of 1817, excluding Brazeau's four by four arpents.
Page 66 U. S. 201
In 1847, the matter as regarded these surveys was reported by
the Surveyor General to the General Land Office, where it was held
that Brazeau was entitled to his four arpents square in the
southeasterly part of Soulard's Spanish survey of 1799, which
embraced both Labeaume's and Brazeau's tracts. This decision was
overruled by Secretary Steuart in 1851, under whose order a survey
was made for Brazeau outside of Labeaume's survey, as made by
Brown.
This decision we are called on, in effect, to overthrow by
holding that Brazeau's land is covered by the patent to Labeaume,
and the legal title vested in his representatives. And it is
insisted that if it is, then a court of equity may decree that it
shall be conveyed by the legal owner to him having the better
equity. And this raises the question whether the Secretary was
authorized by law to reject the survey of 1817, order another, and
overthrow Brazeau's claim of title. That the General Land Office
has, from its first establishment in 1812, exercised control over
surveys generally is not open to discussion at this day.
By the Act of March 3, 1807, the board of commissioners was
required to deliver to each party whose claim was confirmed a
certificate that he was entitled to a patent for the tract of land
designated. This certificate was to be presented to the Surveyor
General, who proceeded to have the survey made and returned, with
the certificate, to the recorder of land titles, whose duty it was
to issue a patent certificate, which, being transmitted to the
Secretary of the Treasury, entitled the party to a patent. Act of
1807, § 6.
This duty of the Secretary of the Treasury, by the act of 1812
is transferred to the Commissioner of the General Land Office.
The Act of April 18, 1814, § 1, requires that accurate surveys
shall be made according to the description in the certificate of
confirmation, and proper returns shall be made to the commissioner
of the certificate and survey, and all such other evidence as may
be required by the Commissioner.
These acts show that the surveys and proceedings must be,
Page 66 U. S. 202
in regard to their correctness, within the jurisdiction of the
commissioner, and such has been the practice. Of necessity, he must
have power to adjudge the question of accuracy preliminary to the
issue of a patent.
By the Act of July 4, 1836, reorganizing the General Land
Office, plenary powers are conferred on the commissioner to
supervise all surveys of public lands, "and also such as relate to
private claims of land and the issuing of patents."
By the Act of March 3, 1849, the Interior Department was
established. The 3d section of the act vests the Secretary, in
matters relating to the General Land Office, including the powers
of supervision and appeal, with the same powers that were formerly
discharged by the Secretary of the Treasury.
The jurisdiction to revise on the appeal was necessarily
coextensive with the powers to adjudge by the commissioner. We are
therefore of the opinion that the Secretary had authority to set
aside Brown's survey of Labeaume's tract, order another to be made,
and to issue a patent to Labeaume throwing off Brazeau's claim.
A preliminary motion was made to dismiss this cause for want of
jurisdiction, which was brought on with the final hearing.
The survey made by Brown in 1817 for Labeaume included both the
tracts confirmed to Labeaume and Brazeau. This survey was duly
approved, and so continued for fifteen years. A patent might have
been issued on it either singly to Labeaume or jointly to the two
owners, Brazeau's sixteen arpents being granted to him in the
southeast corner of the survey.
Standing on the original concession, Brazeau's tract had no
specific boundary and attached to no land, but Brown's survey
identified its locality and boundary, and vested a title to land,
subject to be sued for and recovered by the local laws of Missouri,
and the bill was filed to assert this title on the ground that the
Secretary of the Interior Department had no authority to set the
survey aside, divest Brazeau's title, and locate the land
elsewhere. The construction of the acts of Congress conferring
power on the Secretary to do the acts
Page 66 U. S. 203
complained of was prominently drawn in question, and the
decision below rejected the title set up by maintaining the
validity of the Secretary's decision.
The case falls within the principle declared in
Lytle's
Case, 22 How. 202. The finding of the state court
and the decree founded on that finding show that the question
necessary to give this Court jurisdiction was raised and decided.
Craig v.
Missouri, 4 Pet. 425,
29 U. S.
426
MR. CHIEF JUSTICE TANEY.
I think the Court has not jurisdiction in this case. The only
point in dispute appears to be upon the true location of the land
reserved by Brazeau in his deed to Labeaume. And that question
depends altogether upon the description of it in the deed, and not
upon the survey made by the Surveyor General of the United States,
nor upon the judgment or decision of the Land Office. It is a
judicial question, belonging exclusively to a court and jury of the
state and not embraced in any one of the provisions of the 25th
section of the Judiciary Act of 1789, in which appellate power over
a judgment of a state court is conferred upon this Court. But as a
majority of the Court is of a contrary opinion and has taken
jurisdiction, I concur in affirming the judgment.
Mr. justice GRIER.
I concur with the Chief justice.
Decree of the Supreme court of Missouri affirmed.