Company. The court decided that the Des Moines Navigation Company had good title to the land. The case was taken to the United States Supreme Court and that tribunal confirmed the decision in December, 1866.
That Court held that the lands above the Raccoon Fork, within five miles of the Des Moines River, which were at one time claimed to belong to the grant of 1846, had been withdrawn from sale and entry on account of a difference of opinion on part of the officers of the Land Department as to the extent of the grant. That it had never been legally restored to market and that the Congressional legislation of 1861-62 conferred the title on the Des Moines Navigation Company and its grantees, thus reversing in effect the former decision in the Litchfield case and laying the foundation for the confiscation of the homes of all of the settlers on the “river lands” who held titles from the Government of the United States.
Under this decision the Navigation Company and its grantees claimed more than 100,000 acres of land above the Raccoon Fork and at once began to notify the settlers upon these lands to vacate their homes. After this decision was made, however, the Secretary of the Interior, O. H. Browning, reviewed the various acts of Congress, the decisions of the courts and the Land Department and decided against the claim of the Navigation Company to the lands held by actual settlers.
This decision was given in the case of Herbert Battin who settled on a tract of land lying within five miles of the Des Moines River in an odd numbered section above the Raccoon Fork and claimed as a part of the grant to Iowa for the improvement of the Des Moines River made in 1846. It was also within the six miles limit of the railroad grant of 1856, and was approved and certified to the State under both grants. Herbert Battin had purchased the improvements made on the land by a pioneer settler and complied with all of the requirements of the preëmption laws and was allowed by the Land Department to
