(6) and proof of the publication and posting of notices for the required time, the same in all respects as is required by the ninth subdivision of paragraph 20 hereof. The proof being accepted and the certificate of entry issued by the ex officio register of the Sitka land office, the purchase price of the land should be paid to and receipted for by the clerk of the district court, who is ex officio receiver of the Sitka land office, after which all the papers will be forwarded to this office, and, if found to be complete and made in accordance with these instructions, patent will issue without delay. Cash certificate of entry (No. 4-189) will be used by the ex officio register in allowing all entries authorized by the law and these regulations, and said entries will be numbered consecutively beginning with number one. A protest against the allowance of a town-site entry will be heard, and the same permitted to be carried into a contest, in the same manner and under the same conditions as hereinbefore provided in the matter of applications to make entries for the purposes of trade and manufactures.

26. It is also made my duty to provide rules and regulations for the survey and platting of the town sites in Alaska into streets, alleys, blocks, and lots, or for the approval of such surveys as may already have been made by the inhabitants thereof, and for the conveyance of the lots and blocks to the occupants of said town sites, according to their respective interests. To accomplish the latter provision necessitates the careful consideration of a somewhat difficult problem,

involving the right of the natives of Alaska, who constitute the larger part of the population of all the towns in said Territory, but who are not citizens of the United States, to receive title from the Government to the lots severally occupied and claimed by them.

Although the political status of these people remains yet to be determined by legislation, still, the fact that they are held amenable to all the laws made applicable to said Territory in which they have lived at peace with the white settlers for ages, that they far outnumber the citizen and foreign-born population of all those towns in which white men have settled, and that many of them have invested their earnings in property in those towns and are exercising peaceable and undisputed occupancy and right of possession over the same, I therefore deem it proper, in order to further encourage them in adopting civilized life and accepting and following the instruction and example of the teachers, missionaries, and all other right-thinking people who come among them, and equitable and just and within my power, to construe the language of section 2387, United States Revised Statutes, under which town-site entries are made "in trust for the several use and benefit of the occupants thereof, according to their respective interests," in the most liberal and comprehensive sense, and to the advantage of these natives. Therefore, the trustees of the several town sites entered in said Territory shall levy assessments upon the property either occupied or possessed by any native Alaskan the same as if he were a white man, and

shall apportion and convey the same to him according to his respective interest, without regard to the question of citizenship. But, in case of white settlers, or associations or corporations, the trustees shall require the same evidence of citizenship or the right to hold real estate, as the case may be, as is required above of purchasers of land for purposes of trade or manufactures.

27. The entry having been made and forwarded to this office, the trustee will cause an actual survey of the lots, blocks, streets and alleys of the town site to be made, conforming as near as in his judgment it is deemed advisable to the original plan or survey of such town, making triplicate plats of said survey and designating upon each of said plats the lots occupied, together with the value of the same and the name of the owner or owners thereof; and in like manner he will designate thereon the lots occupied by any corporation, religious organization, or private or sectarian school. When the plats are finally completed, they will be certified to by him as follows:

"I, the undersigned, trustee of the town site of Alaska Territory, hereby certify that I have examined the survey of said town site and approved the foregoing plat thereof as strictly conformable to said survey made in accordance with the act of Congress approved March 3, 1891, and my official instructions."

One of said plats shall be filed in the land office in the district where the town site is located,