flicted with one of the stipulations in the act under which the State had been admitted to the Union, Congress not having otherwise legislated upon the subject, it was said:

"In considering this act of Congress of March 1st, 1817, it is unnecessary to institute any examination or criticism. as to its legitimate meaning, or operation, or binding authority, farther than to affirm that it could have no effect to restrict the new State in any of its necessary attributes as an independent sovereign government, nor to inhibit or diminish its perfect equality with the other members of the Confederacy with which it was to be associated. These conclusions follow from the very nature and objects of the Confederacy, from the language of the Constitution adopted by the States, and from the rule of interpretation pronounced by this court in the case of Pollard's Lessee v. Hagan, 3 How. p. 223."

In Escanaba Co. v. Chicago, cited above, it was contended that the control of the State of Illinois over its internal waters had been restricted by the ordinance of 1787, and by the reference to that ordinance in the act of Congress admitting the State. Concerning this insistence, this court, speaking by Mr. Justice Field, said:

"Whatever the limitation upon her powers as a government whilst in a territorial condition, whether from the ordinance of 1787 or the legislation of Congress, it ceased to have any operative force, except as voluntarily adopted by her, after she became a State of the Union. On her admission she at once became entitled to and possessed of all the rights of dominion and sovereignty which belonged to the original States. She was admitted, and could be admitted, only on the same footing with them. The language of the resolution admitting her is 'on an equal footing with the original States in all respects whatever.' 3 Stat. 536. Equality of constitutional right and power is the condition of all the States of the Union, old and new.

Illinois, therefore, as was well observed by counsel, could afterwards exercise the same power over rivers within her limits that Delaware exercised over Black Bird Creek, and Pennsylvania over the Schuylkill River. Pollard's Lessee v. Hagan, 3 How. 212; Permoli v. First Municipality, id. 589; Strader v. Graham, 10 id. 82."

In Ward v. Race Horse, supra, the necessary equality of the new State with the original States is asserted and maintained against the claim that the police power of the State of Wyoming over its wild game had been restricted by an Indian treaty made prior to the admission of the State of Wyoming.

In Bolln v. Nebraska, 176 U. S. 83, 89, it appeared that the act under which Nebraska had been admitted had, among other things, required the convention organized to form a constitution for the proposed State to adopt for the people of that State the Constitution of the United States. This was done. It was claimed as a result that the power of the State to authorize the prosecution of a felony by information had been restricted, because the United States could, under one of the amendments to the Constitution, prosecute only by indictment. In respect to this claim the court said:

"But conceding all that can be claimed in this connection, and that the State of Nebraska did enter the Union under the condition of the Enabling Act, and that it adopted the Constitution of the United States as its fundamental law, all that was meant by these words was that the State acknowledged, as every other State has done, the supremacy of the Federal Constitution. The first section of the act of 1867, admitting the State into the Union, declared: 'that it is hereby admitted into the Union upon an equal footing with the original States in all respects whatsoever.' It is impossible to suppose that, by such indefinite language as was used in the Enabling Act, Congress intended to differentiate Nebraska from her sister

States, even if it had the power to do so, and attempt to impose more onerous conditions upon her than upon them, or that in cases arising in Nebraska a different construction should be given to her constitution from that given to the constitutions of other States. But this court has held in many cases that, whatever be the limitations upon the power of a territorial government, they cease to have any operative force, except as voluntarily adopted after such territory has become a State of the Union. Upon the admission of a State it becomes entitled to and possesses all the rights of dominion and sovereignty which belonged to the original States, and, in the language of the act of 1867 admitting the State of Nebraksa, it stands 'upon an equal footing with the original States in all respects whatsoever.'"

We are unable to find in any of the decisions of this court cited by counsel for the appellants anything which contravenes the view we have expressed. Green v. Biddle, 8 Wheat. 1, involved the question as to whether a compact between two States, assented to by Congress, by which private land titles in Kentucky, derived from Virginia before the separation of Kentucky from Virginia, "should remain valid and secure under the laws of the proposed State of Kentucky, and should be determined by the laws now existing in this (Virginia) State." By subsequent legislation of the State of Kentucky these titles were adversely affected. This court held that this legislation impaired the obligation of a valid contract within that clause of the Constitution forbidding such impairment. Neither does Virginia v. West Virginia, 11 Wall. 39, have any bearing here. The question there was one of compact between the two States, assented to by Congress, concerning the boundary between them. Both the cases last referred to concerned compacts between States, authorized by the Constitution when assented to by Congress. They were therefore compacts and agreements VOL. CCXXI-37

sanctioned by the Constitution, while the one here sought to be enforced is one having no sanction in that instrument.

Beecher v. Wetherby, 95 U. S. 517, involved the validity of the grant of every sixteenth section in each township for school purposes. The grant was made by the act providing for the organization of a state government for the Territory of Wisconsin, and purported to be upon condition that the proposed State should never interfere with the primary disposal of the public lands of the United States, nor subject them to taxation. The grant was held to operate as a grant taking effect so soon as the necessary surveys were made. The conditions assented to by the State were obviously such as obtained no force from the assent of the State, since they might have been exacted as an exertion of the proper power of Congress to make rules and regulations as to the disposition of the public lands. Minnesota v. Bachelder, 1 Wall. 109, is another case which involved nothing more than an exertion by Congress of its power to regulate the disposition of the public lands.

The case of the Kansas Indians, 5 Wall. 737, involved the power of the State of Kansas to tax lands held by the individual Indians in that State under patents from the United States. The act providing for the admission of Kansas into the Union provided that nothing contained in the constitution of the State should be construed to "impair the rights of persons or property pertaining to the Indians of said territory, so long as such rights shall remain unextinguished by treaty with such Indians." It was held that so long as the tribal organization of such Indians was recognized as still existing, such lands were not subject to taxation by the State. The result might be well upheld either as an exertion of the power of Congress over Indian tribes, with whom the United States had treaty relations, or as a contract by which the State had agreed to forego taxation of Indian lands, a contract quite

within the power of a State to make, whether made with the United States for the benefit of its Indian wards, or with a private corporation for the supposed advantages resulting. Certainly the case has no bearing upon a compact by which the general legislative power of the State is to be impaired with reference to a matter pertaining purely to the internal policy of the State. See Stearns v. Minnesota, 179 U. S. 223.

No good can result from a consideration of the other cases cited by plaintiffs in error. None of them bear any more closely upon the question here involved than those referred to. If anything was needed to complete the argument against the assertion that Oklahoma has not been admitted to the Union upon an equality of power, dignity and sovereignty with Massachusetts or Virginia, it is afforded by the express provision of the act of admission, by which it is declared that when the people of the proposed new State have complied with the terms of the act that it shall be the duty of the President to issue his proclamation, and that "thereupon the proposed State of Oklahoma shall be deemed admitted by Congress into the Union under and by virtue of this act, on an equal footing with the original States." The proclamation has been issued and the Senators and Representatives from the State admitted to their seats in the Congress.

Has Oklahoma been admitted upon an equal footing with the original States? If she has, she by virtue of her jurisdictional sovereignty as such a State may determine for her own people the proper location of the local seat of government. She is not equal in power to them if she cannot.

In Texas v. White, 7 Wall. 700, 725, Chief Justice Chase said in strong and memorable language that, "the Constitution, in all of its provisions looks to an indestructible Union, composed of indestructible States."

In Lane County v. Oregon, 7 Wall. 76, he said: