Court orders disposing of property in this way frequently describe highly dubious land transactions, such as settlers obtaining court ordered transfers of the land of Choctaw women who died with no living heirs, and proving ownership by claiming a cash transaction occurred just prior to her death, the receipt to which signed only with her X, and accepted as valid by the court. In normal circumstances, a judge presented with such a claim would not accept the story as true without substantial evidence that the receipt for the land sale was authentic, or that the deceased woman spent or died in possession of the money she allegedly received for the land. And because these proceedings were uncontested—-that is, conducted without any tribal members present—-no one objected and drew attention to whether settlers might have been the cause of the death in the first place, in which case the Slayer Rule would invalidate any claim to the estate.
