Regulations for preparing a roll of the Northwestern Band of Shoshone Indians eligible to share in the distribution of $15.7 million were issued today by the Secretary of the Interior Rogers C. B. Morton, Commissioner of Indian Affairs Louis R. Bruce announced.
The award represents settlement by compromises of claims for the taking in 1868 and 1869 of about 38,000,000 acres of land in Idaho, Wyoming, Utah, and Nevada aboriginally owned by the Shoshone Tribe; the use of funds of the Shoshone Bannock Tribes of Fort Hall for irrigation projects; the taking of about 297,000 acres of Fort Hall Reservation land in 1889; the taking of 407,000 acres of Fort Hall reservation land in 1898; and failure of the United States to provide a reservation for the Bannock Tribe as promised by the Treaty of July 3, 1868 (15 Stat. 673).
Shoshone Indians who may be eligible for enrollment must be:
- Born prior to and living on December 18, 1971;
- Either their names appear on one of the following Indian census rolls of the Washakie Sub-Agency of the Fort Hall jurisdiction:
- Roll dated January 1, 1937, by F. A. Gross, Superintendent of the Fort Hall Reservation.
- Roll dated January 1, 1940, by F. A. Gross, Superintendent of the Fort Hall Reservation.
- Roll dated March 10, 1954.
- Roll dated April 21, 1964.
or they possess one-quarter Shoshone Indian blood and they are descendants of those appearing on at least one of said rolls;
- They are not recognized as members of the Shoshone Bannock Tribes of the Fort Hall Reservation, the Shoshone Tribe of the Wind River Reservation, or any other Indian Tribe; and
- They shall elect not to participate in any settlement of claims pending before the Indian Claims Commission in docket 326-J, Shoshone-Goshute, and docket 326-K, Western Shoshone.
