Alexandria Gazette

IMPORTANT DISCLOSURES.
From the Franklin (Tenn.) Review.
Fraudulent Speculation in the Public Lands of the United States, amounting to a million and a half of dollars.
The following extract of a letter from a friend in Columbus, Mississippi, discloses facts of a singular and unexpected character in relation to the public lands. We are promised full details respecting the whole matter in a short time. For the present we furnish the following particulars, that our western friends, many of whom are interested in receiving early information of these things, may keep a sharp look out. Congress will undoubtedly institute a thorough investigation of the whole scheme.

"COLUMBUS (Miss.) NOV. 9th, 1835.

This place wears the usual aspect of great and increasing prosperity. It is said to contain a population of eight hundred, which is increasing daily. An intelligent commercial friend informs me that upwards of four hundred thousand dollars worth of goods have been sold here the present year; and the business is rapidly increasing. There will be a third more mercantile establishments in the place next season. Six or eight houses are now building for stores, besides a large number of others for residences. But the number of persons who visit here to procure lands, either for cultivation, or on speculation, adds a third to the present both to the business and population of the place. The woods are indeed as much alive with land seekers and speculators as you have no doubt beheld the forest with flocks of pigeons. And yet most of these persons will be unable to get lands because it has recently come out that most of them will be covered with Indian claims under the treaty. The existence of such a claim upon the public lands here, has been kept a profound secret until within the last five or six days; and the announcement of it has occasioned a considerable excitement.

It seems that some few individuals have purchased the title of the Indians, or rather have agreed with them, to procure the allowance of it by the government, for one half. It is said that that title covers fourteen hundred and forty-three sections of six hundred and forty acres each of the most choice of these public lands, which are worth at the government price upwards of a million and a half of dollars. Perhaps it will excite your surprise that a claim of such magnitude should never be heard of for the first time, and well it may, for there is no doubt that more than two thousand souls have been hoodwinked out of their right and that the whole originates in an attempt of a few speculators to make a fortune out of Uncle Sam. It is sought to be made under the clause of the treaty with the Choctaws, which provides that any other nation which shall have their names enrolled within six months after the ratification of the treaty, and have resided upon certain lands for four, then five years thereat, with a view to obtaining, as the United States say, a fee simple title to the same. It is denied by those who seek to support it that no more than two thirds of the Indians for whom it is claimed have never been brought within the limits of the requisitions of the treaty, having never come there nor resided upon the lands. But this is said to be false, originated from the misconduct of the former Indian agent Col. Ward, who it is said took the names of one class of these Indians, but are now said to be lost or destroyed, and who as regards the other of them refused to take the enrollment of their names at all. With respect to these, the purchasers of the Indian claims admit that an act of congress is necessary to remedy the neglect or misconduct of the treaty agent, bringing the claims within the provisions of the treaty. Yet they have located these claims upon the choicest of the public lands, with the expectation that congress will pass an act to sanction them. But it is obvious that Congress will not do it if fully informed of the facts. If the Indians have suffered from the misconduct of the agents of the government, Congress will certainly remunerate them, but it will certainly not legislate a million and a half of dollars into the pockets of a few individuals. These speculators have become alarmed and are seeking to form a company of one hundred individuals with a stock of five hundred dollars each. I will inform you further, within a few days of all the facts. The attention of Congress should certainly be called to this subject. It is one of the most barefaced attempts to chouse Uncle Sam out of his land, which has ever come within my knowledge.""