“These considerations were presented to the Creek Council by their attorney soon after the passage of the Act and upon his advice they again took an advanced position and decided to test the power of Congress to take away from them the right of tax exemption. A resolution to that effect was passed by the Creek Council in October, 1908, but it needed the approval of the President of the United States to make it effective. And here arose a peculiar situation. “When Mr. Mott presented the resolution to Mr. Garfield, the Secretary of the Interior, and the President, they stated that they had approved and the President had signed the bill removing restrictions and making the unrestricted homesteads taxable. It was represented to the latter in reply that the Indians believed they were wronged by the Act, and that if the President refused to aid them in getting into court to have their rights measured and determined, the Indians would feel that the Government was not acting in good faith toward them and was afraid to have its actions inquired into by the courts. President Roosevelt admitted the force of their position and approved the resolution. “Mr. Sturdevant again was retained to present this question to the courts, together with a similar question arising in the Choctaw Nation, the question being common to all the tribes. As in the Marchie Tiger restriction case the Oklahoma trial and Supreme courts held against the contention of the Indians. They decided that the Indians must pay taxes on homesteads as well as on all other land from which restrictions against sale were removed. Mr. Sturdevant, confident of his position, appealed to the United States Supreme Court and argued the novel question to an interested bench which handed down an opinion on May 13, 1912, reversing the courts below. It held that the Indians’ exemption from taxation was a property right that had become vested in exchange for a valuable consideration, to wit, the consent of each allottee to take his portion of land and yield any claim to all other tribal property, and that Congress had no more power to destroy, impair or withdraw that exemption than it had to take the land itself. “In the opinion the Supreme Court stated a rule by which the rights of Indians should always be measured, whether in the courts or in Congress. It was said that ‘_the construction_ (of statutes) _instead of being strict, is liberal; doubtful expressions, instead of being resolved in favor of the United States, are to be resolved in favor of a weak and defenseless people, who are wards of the nation, and dependent wholly upon its protection and good faith._’