allegiance to the government of the United States and protection. The inequality between the parties is to are subject to its courts.1 A white man who is incorporated with a tribe by adoption does not thereby become an Indian, so as to cease to be amenable to the laws of the United States or to lose the right to trial in their courts.2 Under the Constitution "Indians not taxed" are not counted in apportioning representatives and direct taxes among the States; and Congress has power to regulate commerce with the Indian tribes. The tribes are alien nations, distinct political communities, with whom the United States have habitually dealt either through treaties or acts of Congress. The members owe immediate allegiance to their several tribes, and are not part of the people of the United States. They are in a dependent condition, a state of pupilage, resembling that of a ward to his guardian. Indians and their property, exempt from taxation by treaty or statute of the United States, cannot be taxed by any State. General acts of Congress do not apply to Indians, unless so expressed as to clearly manifest an intention to include them. The alien and dependent condition of the members of the tribes cannot be put off at their own will, without the assent of the United States. They have never been deemed citizens, except under explicit provisions of treaty or statute to that effect; nor were they made citizens by the Fourteenth Amendment.3 While the government has recognized in the Indian tribes heretofore a state of semi-independence and pupilage, it has the right and authority, instead of controlling them by treaties, to govern them by acts of Congress: they being within the geographical limits of the United States, and necessarily subject to the laws which Congress may enact for their protection and that of the people with whom they came in contact. A State has no power over them as long as they maintain their tribal relations: the Indians then owe no allegiance to the State, and receive from it no protection. In construing a treaty, if words be used which are susceptible of a more extended meaning than their plain import, as connected with the tenor of the treaty, they should be considered as used in the latter sense. How the words were understood by the unlettered people, rather than their critical meaning, should forin the rule of construction. The relations between the United States and the different tribes being those of a superior toward an inferior who is under its care and control, its acts touching them and its promises to them, in the execution of its own policy and in the furtherance of its own interests, are to be interpreted as justice and reason demand in all cases where power is exerted by the strong over those to whom they owe care and Exp. Reynolds, ante. 2 United States v. Rogers, 4 How. 567 (1846); 2 Ор. Att.-Gen. 693; 4 id. 258; 7 id. 174. 3 Elk v. Wilkins, 112 U. S. 99-100, 102 (1884), cases, Gray, J. 4 United States v. Kagama, 118 U. S. 375, 381-82 (1886), cases, Miller, J. Act 3 March, 1871: R. S. § 2079; 119 U. S. 27. be made good by the superior justice which looks only to the substance of the right, without regard to technical rules framed under a system of municipal jurisprudence, formulating the rights and obligations of private persons, equally subject to the same laws. A treaty is not to be read as rigidly as a document between private persons governed by a system of technical law, but in the light of that larger reason which constitutes the spirit of the law of nations.1 Indian country. That portion of the United States declared such by act of Congress; not, a country owned or inhabited by Indians in whole or in part. As, in the act declaring it a crime to introduce spirituous liquors in such country." Applies to all the country to which the Indian title has not been extinguished, whether within a reservation or not, and whenever acquired. Indian Territory. An act approved February 15, 1888 (25 St. L. 33), provides that any person hereafter convicted in the United States courts having jurisdiction over the Indian Terrritory or parts thereof, of stealing any horse, mare, gelding, filly, foal, ass or mule, when said theft is committed in the Territory, shall be punished by a fine of not more than one thousand dollars, or by imprisonment not more than fifteen years, or by both, at the discretion of the court. L. Marks; signs; appearances; color. In civil law, circumstantial evidence - facts which give rise to inferences. In common law, indications 1 Choctaw Nation v. United States, 119 U. S. 28 (1886), Matthews, J. On Indian citizenship, see 20 Am. Law Rev. 183-93 (1886), cases. 2 United States v. Seveloff, 2 Saw. 311 (1872); Pelcher v. United States, 3 McCrary, 510, 515 (1882), cases; United States v. Martin, 8 Saw. 473 (1883), cases; Forty. Three Cases of Brandy, 14 F. R. 539-42 (1882), cases; United States v. Earl, 17 id. 75 (1883), cases; United States v. Holliday, 3 Wall. 407, 415-19 (1865). • Exp. Crow Dog, 109 U. S. 556, 561 (1883). See also * Worcester v. Georgia, 6 Pet. *582 (1832), M'Lean, J. United States v. Le Bris, 121 id. 287 (1887): R. S. § 2139.