In December, 1871, he was again examined for retirement, and the board found that he was not in any way incapacitated from performing the duties of his office.  The next year, in 1872, another retiring board, upon an examination of his case, found that he was “laboring under general debility, the effect of intermittent fever acting upon an originally delicate constitution,” and he was thereupon placed upon the retired list of the Navy.

On the 10th day of August, 1873, he was accidentally shot and killed by a neighbor, who was attempting to shoot an owl.

As long as there is the least pretense of limiting the bestowal of pensions to disability or death in some way related to the incidents of military and naval service, claims of this description can not consistently be allowed.

GROVER CLEVELAND.

EXECUTIVE MANSION, May 7, 1888.

To the House of Representatives: 

I return without approval House bill No. 1406, entitled “An act to provide for the sale of certain New York Indian lands in Kansas.”

Prior to the year 1838 a number of bands and tribes of New York Indians had obtained 500,000 acres of land in the State of Wisconsin, upon which they proposed to reside.  In the year above named a treaty was entered into between the United States and these Indians whereby they relinquished to the Government these Wisconsin lands.  In consideration thereof, and, as the treaty declares, “in order to manifest the deep interest of the United States in the future peace and prosperity of the New York Indians,” it was agreed there should be set apart as a permanent home for all the New York Indians then residing in the State of New York, or in Wisconsin, or elsewhere in the United States, who had no permanent home, a tract of land amounting to 1,824,000 acres, directly west of the State of Missouri, and now included in the State of Kansas—­being 320 acres for each Indian, as their number was then computed—­“to have and to hold the same in fee simple to the said tribes or nations of Indians by patent from the President of the United States.”

Full power and authority was also given to said Indians “to divide said lands among the different tribes, nations, or bands in severalty,” with the right to sell and convey to and from each other under such rules and regulations as should be adopted by said Indians in their respective tribes or in general council.

The treaty further provided that such of the tribes of these Indians as did not accept said treaty and agree to remove to the country set apart for their new homes within five years or such other time as the President might from time to time appoint should forfeit all interest in the land so set apart to the United States; and the Government guaranteed to protect and defend them in the peaceable possession and enjoyment of their new homes.

I have no positive information that any considerable number of these Indians removed to the lands provided for them within the five years limited by the treaty.  Their omission to do so may have been owing to the failure of the Government to appropriate the money to pay the expense of such removal, as it agreed to do in the treaty.