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Page Number: 49.0

4 

MCGIRT v. OKLAHOMA 

ROBERTS, C. J., dissenting 

“entire domain.”  E.g., Preamble and Art. III, id., at 785– 
786.  These western lands became the Oklahoma Territory.
As before, the new treaties promised that the reduced In-
dian  Territory  would  be  “forever  set  apart  as  a  home”  for 
the Tribes.  E.g., Art. III, id., at 786.1 

Again, however, it was not to last.  In the wake of the war, 
a renewed “determination to  thrust the nation westward” 
gripped the country.  Cohen §1.04, at 71.  Spurred by new
railroads and protected by the repurposed Union Army, set-
tlers  rapidly  transformed  vast  stretches  of  territorial  wil-
derness into farmland and ranches.  See id., at 71–74.  The 
Indian Territory was no exception.  By 1900, over 300,000
settlers had poured in, outnumbering members of the Five
Tribes by over 3 to 1.  See H. R. Rep. No. 1762, 56th Cong., 
1st  Sess.,  1  (1900).    There  to  stay,  the  settlers  founded 
“[f]lourishing  towns”  along  the  railway  lines  that  crossed 
the territory.  S. Rep. No. 377, 53d Cong., 2d Sess., 6 (1894). 
Coexistence proved complicated.  The new towns had no 
municipal  governments  or  the  things  that  come  with
them—laws,  taxes,  police,  and  the  like.  See  H. R.  Doc. 
No. 5, 54th Cong., 1st Sess., 89 (1895).  No one had mean-
ingful access to private property ownership, as the unique
communal titles of the Five Tribes precluded ownership by
Indians and non-Indians alike.  Despite the millions of dol-
lars  that  had  been  invested  in  the  towns  and  farmlands, 
residents  had  no  durable  claims  to  their  improvements. 
Ibid.    Members  of  the  Tribes  were  little  better  off,  as  the 

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1 I assume that the Creek Nation’s territory constituted a “reservation”
at this time.  See ante, at 5–6.  The State contends that no reservation 
existed in the first place because the territory instead constituted a “de-
pendent  Indian  communit[y].”    Brief  for  Respondent  8  (quoting  18 
U. S. C. §1151(b)).  The United States disagrees and states that defining
the territory as a dependent Indian community could disrupt the appli-
cation of various federal statutes.  Tr. of Oral Arg. 79–80.  I do not ad-
dress  this  debate  because,  regardless,  I  conclude  that  any  reservation 
was disestablished.