June 7, 1897
[Editor's Note: This is an excerpt from the United States Statutes at Large, Volume 30, which contains the public laws passed by the Fifty-Fifth Congress during its first session in 1897. The following text is from Chapter 3 (30 Stat. 89). The text references a Seneca Nation council resolution adopted on or about December 3, 1896, and an agreement with William B. Barker entered into on January 3, 1893.]
Whereas the Seneca Indians in council, January third, eighteen hundred and ninety-three, duly entered into an agreement with William B. Barker whereby said nation leased to said Barker the Oil Springs, the Cattaraugus, and Allegany reservations, situate in western New York, for the purpose of boring and testing said territory for gas and oil, under certain conditions therein stated, said agreement having been ratified and confirmed by Act of Congress; and
Whereas the assignee of said lease has re-leased to the Seneca Indians certain portions of the lands and reservations, included or referred to in said lease, and the council of the Seneca Nation of Indians, by a resolution adopted by said council, on or about the third day of December, eighteen hundred and ninety-six, in all things ratified, confirmed, and extended as to the lessee thereof, and as to the assignees thereof, the said lease, and empowered and authorized them to fulfill the said lease, the same and to the same extent as the original lessee might or could have done, when said lease was executed: Now therefore, The action aforesaid of the lessee of said lease and of the council of the Seneca Nation is hereby ratified and confirmed as the same has been sanctioned and ratified by the said resolution of the said Seneca Nation.
Approved, June 7, 1897.