Lone Wolf the Younger

With the assistance of the Indian Rights Association, Lone Wolf and the Kiowa people lobbied against the ratification of the Jerome Agreement by Congress. The basis for the Indian Rights Associations support was that they felt the Agreement was wrongly imposed upon the Indians, it had false signatures, and in effect the lands were being taken without compensation and the size of the allotments offered to the Indians was not adequate to support them. Despite the various protests, in 1900 Congress added the substantially amended Jerome document as Section 6 to the Fort Hall Agreement of June 6 and passed the legislation allotting the Kiowa, Comanche, and Apache reserve and opened the reservation's surplus lands to white settlers. Under the terms of the Act of June 6, 1900, the United States took over title to over 2.9 million acres of the KCA Reservation.

Lone Wolf and his nephew Delos Knowles Lone Wolf, educated at Carlisle Boarding School who was a farmer and government interpreter on the KCA Reservation, hired attorney William McKendree Springer to handle the litigation. On July 22, 1901 Lone Wolf pursued a temporary restraining order and a permanent injunction stopping the cession and the opening of the surplus lands of the Kiowa, Comanche, Apache Reservation. Springer was accompanied by Hays McMeehan, William C. Reeves, and Charles Porter Johnson. Lone Wolf was joined by Eschiti, White Buffalo, Ko-koy-taudle, Mar-mo-car-wer, Nar-wats, Too-wi-car-ne, William Tivis, and Delos K. Lone Wolf as plaintiffs. On August 17, 1901 Canadian Judge Clinton F. Irwin refused to issue the temporary restraining order requested by Lone Wolf and the other plaintiffs.

Lone Wolf appealed to the Supreme Court for the District of Columbia and argued that the Jerome Agreement deprived them of their lands without due process of law. Springer for Lone Wolf and the aforementioned plaintiffs argued four points in regards to the Jerome Agreement 1.) The Kiowa, Comanche, and Apache Indians were fraudulently induced to sign the Jerome Agreement and those that did sign did not fully understand its provisions vastly due to the fact that, like Lone Wolf, most of the Indians did not speak English and relied on interpreters. 2.) The Jerome Agreement was not signed by three-fourths of the adult male members of the tribes as required by the Medicine Lodge Treaty. Lone Wolf alleged that the total number of Indian males exceeded the number claimed by the Indian Agent and that the census of 1900 showed there were 639 adult male members of the KCA tribes on the reservation. Thus the Jerome Agreement was twenty-three signatures short of the required amount. 3.) The KCA's had protested the agreement from the beginning. 4.) The version that was ratified by Congress had been significantly altered and amended and the changes made had not been submitted to the KCA for their approval. Springer argued for Lone Wolf that Congress should not be able to unilaterally alter the provisions of the agreement without the Indians' consent and thus the Act should be rejected. Hitchcock responded by arguing that Lone Wolf and the others had taken allotments for themselves and the KCA had been compensated for the ceded lands and by taking the allotments and accepting money for the lands they had accepted the Jerome Agreement. On June 21, 1901 Justice A. C. Bradley denied the KCA's application for a temporary injunction. Justice Bradley stated that Indian tribes are not independent nations but they are dependent wards of the United States in a state of pupilage, subject to the control of Congress.[4]

Springer appealed the District of Columbia Supreme Court's dismissal of the bill to the Court of Appeals of the District of Columbia. While the Lone Wolf's appeal was pending in the Court of Appeals, President McKinley issued a proclamation ordering the surplus lands of the KCA Indian reservation be opened on August 6, 1901 for white settlement through a lottery. On December 4, 1901, Chief Justice Alvey of the D.C. Court of Appeals affirmed the decision of the lower court. Justice Alvey stated, in regards to the conflict between the 1867 Medicine Lodge Treaty and an act of Congress, that the Treaty has to yield to the act of Congress.

William Springer was now aided by attorney Hampton Carson, whom was paid by the Indian Rights Association to assist Springer with the case in the Supreme Court. Springer and Hampton argued several points in the case. Up until this point, the United States had not taken Indian property without consent, the United States had always treated the right of occupancy the Indians possessed as sacred, the Canons of Construction must be followed in Indian law and the Court cannot interpret treaties in a way that prejudices the Indians, and due to treaties being the laws of the land and since the Medicine Lodge Treaty had created vested property rights in the KCA reservation lands, those lands were protected by the Constitution. Assistant Attorney General Willis Van Devanter argued on behalf of the United States and characterized the tribes as wards of the State. Justice Edward Douglass White, who wrote for the court on January 5, 1903, agreed. Due to the fact that Indians were seen as dependent nations and wards of the United States Congress had the right to abrogate a treaty with Indians if the provisions of the treaty went against the best interests of the United States. Justice White also relied on the last-in-time rule where a congressional statute that is the latest enactment may supersede a prior treaty and was the reason the 1867 Medicine Lodge Treaty could be abrogated.[2] Justice White noted that the Court held that the appeal could not be decided in the courts of the United States but had to be made to Congress.