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APPEAL by the United States from a decree of the District Court of the United States decreeing to the representatives of the Chevalier de Repentigny and of Captain Louis De Bonne, a large tract of land at the Saut de St. Marie, under a grant from the French government, in the year 1751. The proceedings and case were thus:
On the 19th April, 1860, the Congress of the United States, at the instance of certain persons, representatives of the Chevalier de Repentigny and of Captain Louis De Bonne, ancient citizens of French Canada, one of whom had died in 1760, and the other in 1786, passed a law authorizing the District Court of the United States for Michigan to examine a claim which these representatives set up to certain land at the Saut de St. Marie in the State of Michigan, under an alleged grant made in the year 1750, by the French government to the said Repentigny and De Bonne.
Under this act of Congress, Louise de Repentigny and others, all females, and resident in Guadaloupe, the representatives by descent of the Chevalier de Repentigny, with one Colonel Rotton, the representative by purchase and devise of Captain De Bonne, filed their petition on the 9th January, 1861, in the nature of a bill in equity against the United States in the said District Court of Michigan. The bill set forth a grant, with certain conditions of occupancy, as a fief or seigniory, on the 18th October, 1750, to Repentigny and De Bonne, by the Marquis de la Jonquiere, Governor of Canada, then a French province called New France, and by Monsieur Bigot, intendant of the same, of a large tract at the Saut de St. Marie, describing its nature and extent; a subsequent ratification by Louis XV, and the descents and purchases by which it was now vested in the petitioners. It set forth further that the Chevalier de Repentigny had entered upon the fief in October, 1750, and remained there till 1754; had caused clearing to be done there, put cattle on it by himself or his tenants, and had occupied the place as required by the terms of his grant, and that when withdrawing, about the year 1755, had left agents of the grantees in possession, who or whose representatives were still in occupancy of some parts of the tract; that the claim had never been abandoned; though, owing to the domicil of the parties in foreign countries, and occupations in the armies and navies of such countries, and in remote public service, the owners had not been aware of any mode in which their rights could be defined and specifically assured; that they had from the first relied implicitly upon the faith of treaties existent, as they averred, in the case, and upon the justice of the government of the United States to protect their rights and shield them from wrong; and, as respected some of the petitioners, women, descendants of Repentigny, that owing to their helplessness and the helplessness of their ancestors in respect to pecuniary means, they had been utterly unable to come to the United States and assert their rights, but had been obliged to remain absent and to trust to such exertions as their friends had from time to time voluntarily made in their behalf to recover the said lands.
The answer of the United States denied generally most of the allegations of the bill; asserted more particularly that the claimants were all aliens; that the conditions of the alleged grant had not been fulfilled by the grantees; and that by the laws of ancient Canada the land had become reunited to the king's domain; that the fief had moreover been abandoned and deserted in fact, and stood possessed by the United States, no judicial forfeiture thereof having been, under the circumstances, necessary; that none of the parties in interest had ever complied with any of the acts of Congress, prescribing in what way claimants of lands in that region should indicate their possessions; that thus, in fact, as well as of right, the fief so abandoned and deserted was reunited to the supreme domain, vested in the people of the United States of America; and that the burden and cost of bringing the same into a productive and profitable estate by the general administration, survey, and settlement thereof, by extinguishing the Indian title thereto, by improvements in the way of public works, and otherwise, had ever since, that is to say, for sixty years and upwards, been thrown upon and borne by the United States. And it set up, moreover, that the land was incapable of identification, and the grant void, owing to the vagueness of the description.
The case, as made out by the evidence, was thus: