Resolutions and Memorials.

COUNCIL JOINT MEMORIAL No. 1.

Your Memorialists, The Sixth Legislative Assembly of the Territory of Oklahoma, would respectfully represent that citizens of Oklahoma and Indian Territory to-wit: A. J. Mathis, M. S. Ballard, Sam V. Pryor, Bert Ivanhoe and H. C. Roper, have been convicted in the United States court at Muskogee, I. T., and are now serving sentences in the penitentiary at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, and at Columbus, Ohio, for complicity in kidnapping two Seminole Indians who had murdered and brutally defiled and outraged the lifeless body of Mrs. Leard, a white woman of spotless character, a mother of five children and soon to become mother of another. That from reliable information we believe these men were but constructively guilty and with one exception, their convictions were as accessories only.

Your Memorialists would respectfully call Your Excellency's attention to a principle derived from the very well-springs of truth, accepted in every phase of society, embodied in codes of criminal and civil procedure, viz: That the circumstances connected with the commission of an offense, mitigating or otherwise, should be considered in all phases of judg ment and penalty.

We ask that in the consideration of these cases s: 'd measure be applied and that when it be found that a whole community was frenzied and grief stricken, the surrounding country wrought up likewise, by the cruel, wanton slaughter of womanhood, maternity and infancy, the defiling of a lifeless mother in the presence of her little children and leaving it upon the freezing ground, a prey of hogs,

which mangled it beyond recognition before human hand could rescue the remains; and when it is made clearly to appear that these men are not of the criminal class and did not act as criminals, but as defenders of the mothers, wives, daughters and unborn babes of our land, Your Memorialists trusting Your Excellency will believe as we do that said persons have been abundantly punished and the majesty of the law fully vindicated do most sincerely ask that your Excellency do pardon and restore to their fami lies and to citizenship the persons whose names are above set forth.

Approved this 5th day of March, 1901.

COUNCIL JOINT MEMORIAL No. 2.

We, the members of the Council and the House of Representatives of the Sixth Legislative Assembly of the Territory of Oklahoma, do most respectfully and earnestly pray, petition and memorialize you and your honorable bodies to grant to this Territory and its people at the earliest possible moment the high privileges of a sovereign state in the American Union.

We represent a constituency of nearly half a million people, increasing with unexampled rapidity, who inhabit nearly 40,000 square miles of fertile soil and who own $150,000,000 of wealth produced in a single decade from the wild prairie and the wilderness. In all its possible lines they stand at the very front of modern civilization. They have built and are supporting more than two thousand common schools; six great institutions of learning; and more churches according to population and wealth than elsewhere in the world. They are a law-abiding and a law-enforcing people. In educational, moral and re

ligious life; in material resources; in population and wealth; in energy, enterprise and accomplishment; in all the high ideals of honorable living, in patriotism and the staunch elements of America's best citi zenship, they are as unsurpassed as they have proved themselves unrivalled in their their capacities for selfgovernment and in their culture and refinement.

We submit to the judgment of a candid world that such a people ought not to be longer held in political subjection, but are and of right ought to be entitled to immediate admission into the American Union as a sovereign state. We would further call your respectful attention to the Indian Territory lying upon our eastern borders. Its natural resources are supplemental to those of Oklahoma. The abnormal conditions there existing as to title and tenure of lands, of citizenship and of social conditions are being rapidly composed to the American idea, and the law by slow and painful experience is learning to assert its power and to subserve public and individual rights. But 350,000 white and black American citizens are there existing without any political privileges, without local self-government, mere tenants at will and peasants of the soil to 70,000 persons of Indian extraction. They can build neither roads nor bridges, neither schools nor higher institutions of learning, neither asylums for the unfortunate nor refuges for the poor. The individual is all, the community is nothing. They cannot protect their cities against fire, nor themselves against public epidemic or contagion. Such conditions are so contrary to the very genius and vitality of the American standards that their continuance is not only unjust to the people immediately suffering them but menacing to their political neighbors and to the nation itself. We be lieve that immediate relief should be had by them; and if in your wisdom Oklahoma alone is not entitled

to Statehood, we urge the immediate admission into the Federal Union of both such Territories as one single State.

We are not unmindful of the treaty obligations of the United States to the Five Civilized Tribes, and would not seek their violation. Let them be sacredly observed. But we most solemnly assert that the various boards and agencies of the Federal government can proceed after the political privileges of citizenship and the inestimable right of local selfgovernment are secured to the American citizens resident there, quite as well as if the present conditions of tenantry and political obliteration shall continue indefinitely.

From the foregoing considerations, we therefore most solemnly pray, petition and memoralize you and your respective bodies to grant to the people of Oklahoma and the Indian Territory with one gov ernment, immediate Statehood under such conditions as in your wisdom will best subserve the present and future welfare and prosperity of the State you shall thus create and admit into the Federal Union. Approved this 8th day of March, 1901.

HOUSE CONCURRENT RESOLUTION No. 1. Be it Resolved by the Legislative Assembly of the Territory of Oklahoma:

Whereas, The Abbey of Sacred Heart in Oklahoma, the oldest and most prominent landmark of civilization in the formerly "Great American Desert," was recently destroyed by fire, and beside the total loss of the buildings valued at $140,000 the library which contained many ancient and very valuable books and manuscripts were irreparably lost. Therefore be it

Resolved, by the House of Representatives, the Council concurring therein; that the sincere sym

pathy of our respective Houses are hereby extended to the Benedictine Brethren of Sacred Heart in their severe visitation and loss.

Approved this 19th day of February, 1901.

HOUSE CONCURRENT RESOLUTION No. 2.

Whereas, The United States has sold and disposed of all the land except two sections of the Fort Supply abandoned military reservation; and,

Whereas, there are upon said remaining two sections many and valuable buildings which would be useful to Oklahoma Territory if the said two sections and buildings were the property of said Territory; and,

Whereas, the said buildings are not being used and are unkept, uncared for and decaying; be it therefore,

Resolved, That the Sixth Legislative Assembly of the Territory of Oklahoma do hereby memorialize and petition the Congress of the United States that it provide by necessary legislation for the granting to the Territory of Oklahoma of the remaining two sections herein before mentioned;

Resolved, That a copy of these resolutions be transmitted to the President of the United States, to the President of the Senate, to the Speaker of the House of Representatives, to the Secretary of the Interior, and to the Hon. Dennis T. Flynn, our delegate in Congress.

Approved this 9th day of February, 1901.

HOUSE CONCURRENT RESOLUTION No. 3.

Whereas, The selection of large quantities of school land in one body is at variance with the long estab