A short news story of May 7 with a dateline of Wheeler, S.D., appeared in a number of 1906 South Dakota newspapers and reported that Mrs. John Sully had applied for a pension from the government.  This application was based on Jack having served in the Union Army at the beginning of the Civil War.

It would then be more than two years before readers read about Mrs. Sully filing a federal law suit against officials of the Bureau of Indian Affairs.  Eight different news stories appeared in South Dakota newspapers between July 11 and 17 of 1908 on this topic.

The suit was instituted by Mary Sully on behalf of herself, her minor children, and other descendants of Sully.  The purpose was to compel the government to allot to herself and the other plaintiffs in the suit lands situated on the Rosebud Reservation in Tripp County.  There were twenty-three plaintiffs listed in the suit.

The defendants were the B.I.A. and John H. Scriven.  Mr. Scriven was the allotting agent in charge of Indian allotments in Gregory, Tripp, and Meyer (Mellette) counties.

Mrs. Sully alleged that she was a half-blood Sioux Indian woman and that she and the other plaintiffs were entitled to allotments of land under the Allotment Act.  About 10,000 acres of land valued at $125,000 was involved in the law suit.

It was outlined in the complaint filed by Mrs. Sully that the B. I. A. and Allotting Agent Scriven had declined to recognize her and the other plaintiffs as Indians.  They refused to allot to them the lands which they had applied for under the law.

Mary Sully alleged that Allotting Agent Scriven and the B. I. A. had threatened to allot to others the lands applied for by them.  Part of these lands had for years been occupied by the plaintiffs on the Rosebud Reservation.  The plaintiffs in this case asked that Allotting Agent Scriven be restrained by the Federal Court from allotting the land involved to other parties pending the final determination of the law suit.

United States Attorney E. E. Wagner immediately filed a demurrer to the complaint by Mrs. Sully.  A demurrer is a response to a court pleading, it admits the alleged facts to be true, it also argues against the pleading by stating no specific cause of action or defense is found within the plaintiff’s allegations.  The B.I.A. and John H. Scriven did not dispute the truth of the facts raised by Mary Sully in her petition, but argued they didn’t matter and were insufficient to grant her the outcome she requested from the courts under relevant law.

This was what had been argued before Judge Carland in Sioux Falls in early July.  Joe Kirby and George Jeffers of Dallas represented Mrs. Sully and the other plaintiffs and argued in support of their complaint.  Judge Carland took the case under advisement.  He had to decide if Mrs. Sully relinquished her claim as a Sioux Indian when she married Jack Sully.

Mr. Scriven told The Mitchell Capital on July 17 that “. . . he held the land ten months for the woman to make her allotment but she failed to do so.”  He said that “the work of allotment would be finished in Tripp County in the course of five or six weeks and that work would then be started in Meyer County (Mellette County).”

The issuance of an injunction by Judge John C. Carland of the United States court at Sioux Falls restrained Allotting Agent Scriven from allotting the land which Mrs. Sully and her heirs claimed.  Mary Sully and her descendants and heirs of Jack Sully had won their first round in the court for possession of about 10,000 acres of land.

According to the court, a bond of $2,000 had to be provided by the plaintiffs, before the injunction would be issued.  The United States government and Allotting Agent Scriven were given until the first Monday in September to file their answer to the bill of complaint of Mrs. Sully and the other plaintiffs.

During the early years of her marriage to Jack, they lived in Charles Mix County and later moved to Pocahontas Island in the Missouri between Gregory and Charles Mix counties. They later moved to Sully Flats in Gregory Country and she and the children moved to Tripp County after Jack was killed in 1904.

The government had refused to allot the Sully’s any land and the case had been before Congress and the Bureau of Indian Affairs several times with an “adverse report to the Sully’s.”  Now, Mrs. Sully had secured an injunction which gave her hope of winning.

A lengthy front page story in The Mitchell Capital of July 17, 1908 concluded with this paragraph:

“The passing of Sully marked the beginning of the end of lawlessness and cattle rustling in the newer portion of the state west of the Missouri River.  He was an outlaw and renegade of pronounced type, but to the neighbors with whom he associated for many years, he was fair and generous.  Whether his descendants and the descendants of his Indian wife shall be accorded their allotments under the government, there are many who knew them who will consider that if they are denied, it will be in effect to visit the sins of Jack Sully upon the innocent by depriving them of their just rights.”

The July 31, 1908 issue of The Norfolk Weekly News-Journal reported:  “Mary Sully is not a Rosebud Sioux but belongs to the Yankton Sioux tribe, and on this account, many thought because of former rulings, that she might lose.”

 

Author Clarence Shoemaker, originally published in the Gregory Times-Advocate on March 29, 2023