Deffeback v. Hawke

Citations

• 115 U.S. 392
• 6 S. Ct. 95
• 29 L. Ed. 423
• 1885 U.S. LEXIS 1850

Syllabus

<p>No title from the United States to land known at the time of sale to be valuable for its minerals of gold, silver, cinnabar, or copper can be obtained under the pre-emption or homestead laws, or the town-site laws, or in any other way than as prescribed by the laws specially authorizing the sale of such lands, except in the States of Michigan, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Missouri and Kansas.</p> <p>A certificate of purchase of- mineral land, upon an entry of the same by a claimant at the local land office, if no adverse claim is filed with the register •and receiver, and the.sntry is not cancelled or disaffirmed by the officers of the Land Department at Washington, passes the right of the government to him, and, as against the acquisition of title by any other party, is equivalent to a patent. . The land thereby ceases to be the subject of sale by the government, which thereafter holds the legal title in trust for the holder of the certificate.</p> <p>The officers of the Land Department have no authority to insert in a patent any other terms than those of conveyance, with recitals showing a compliance with the law, and the conditions which it prescribed. .The patent of a placer mining claim carries with it the title to the surface included within the lines of the mining location, as well as to the land beneath the surface.</p> <p>There can be no color of title in an'occupant of land, who does not hold under an instrument or proceeding or law purporting to transfer the .title or to give the right of possession. Nor can good faith be affirmed of a party in holding adversely, where he knows that he has no title, and that under the law, which he is presumed to know, hé can acquire none. So held where, in an action of ejectment for known mineral land by the holder of a patent of the United States, the oceup'aht set up a claim to' improvements made thereon under, a-statute of Dakota, which provided that “inhn action for the recovery oí real property, upon which permanent imp