31 Stat. L. 1073
For salaries of four commissioners, appointed under acts of Congress approved March third, eighteen hundred and ninety-three, and March second, eighteen hundred and ninety-five, to negotiate with the Five Civilized Tribes in the Indian Territory, twenty thousand dollars : Provided, That the number of said commissioners is hereby fixed at four. For expenses of commissioners and necessary expenses of employees, and three dollars per diem for expenses of a clerk detailed as special disbursing agent by Interior Department, while on duty with the Commission, shall be paid there from; for clerical help, including secretary of the Commission and interpreters, three hundred thousand dollars ; for contingent expenses of the Commission, four thousand dollars; in all, three hundred and twenty-four thousand dollars : Provided further, That this appropriation may be used by said Commission in the prosecution of all work to be done by or under its direction as required by law ; and said commissioners shall at once make an itemized statement to the Secretary of the Interior of all their expenditures up to January first, nineteen hundred and one, and annually there after: And provided further, That not to exceed ten thousand four hundred dollars of the above amount may be used in the temporary employment in the office of the Commissioner of Indian Affairs of three clerks, at the rate of one thousand six hundred dollars per annum, who shall be competent to examine records in disputed citizenship cases and law contests growing out of the work of said Commission, and in the temporary employment in said office of three competent stenographers, at the rate of one thousand dollars each per annum, to be immediately available.
The rolls made by the Commission to the Five Civilized Tribes, when approved by the Secretary of the Interior, shall be final, and the persons whose names are found thereon shall alone constitute the several tribes which they represent ; and the Secretary of the Interior is authorized and directed to fix a time by agreement with said tribes or either of them for closing said rolls, but upon failure or refusal of said tribes or any of them to agree thereto, then the Secretary of the Interior shall fix a time for closing said rolls, after which no name shall be added thereto.
That no act, ordinance, or resolution of the Creek or Cherokee tribes, except resolutions for adjournment, shall be of any validity until approved by the President of the United States. When such acts, ordinances, or resolutions passed by the council of either of said tribes shall be approved by the principal chief thereof, then it shall be the duty of the national secretary of said tribe to forward them to the President of the United States, duly certified and sealed, who shall, within thirty days after their reception, approve or disapprove the same. Said acts, ordinances, or resolutions, when so approved, shall be published in at least two newspapers having a bonafide circulation in the tribe to be affected thereby, and when disapproved shall be returned to the tribe enacting the same.