Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/18pdf/17-532_q86b.pdf
Page Number: 28.0

Cite as:  587 U. S. ____ (2019) 

3 

ALITO, J., dissenting 

immediately  south  of  the  Crow  Tribe’s  reservation.    The 
Act  creating  the  Territory  provided  that  “nothing  in  this 
act  shall  be  construed  to  impair  the  rights  of  person  or 
property  now  pertaining  to  the  Indians  in  said  Territory,
so  long  as  such  rights  shall  remain  unextinguished  by 
treaty between the United States and such Indians.”  Act 
of July 25, 1868, ch. 235, 15 Stat. 178.  Twenty-two years
later, Congress admitted Wyoming as a State “on an equal 
footing  with  the  original  States  in  all  respects  whatever.” 
Act of July 10, 1890, ch. 664, 26 Stat. 222.  The following
year, Congress passed an Act empowering the President to 
“set apart and reserve” tracts of public lands owned by the 
United States as forest reservations.  Act of Mar. 3, 1891, 
ch.  561,  §24,  26  Stat.  1103.  Exercising  that  authority,
President  Cleveland  designated  some  lands  in  Wyoming 
that  remained  under  federal  ownership  as  a  forest  reser-
vation.  Presidential  Proclamation  No.  30,  29  Stat.  909. 
Today, those lands make up the Bighorn National Forest. 
Bighorn  abuts  the  Crow  Reservation  along  the  border 
between  Wyoming  and  Montana  and  includes  land  that
was previously part of the Crow Tribe’s hunting district.

These  enactments  did  not  end  legal  conflicts  between
the white settlers and Indians.  Almost immediately after 
Wyoming’s  admission  to  the  Union,  this  Court  had  to 
determine  the  extent  of  the  State’s  regulatory  power  in
light of a tribe’s reserved hunting rights.  A member of the 
Shoshone-Bannock  Tribes  named  Race  Horse  had  been 
arrested by Wyoming officials for taking elk in violation of
state  hunting  laws.  Race  Horse,  supra,  at  506.  The 
Shoshone-Bannock  Tribes,  like  the  Crow,  had  accepted  a 
reservation while retaining the right to hunt in the lands
previously  within  their  hunting  district.  Their  treaty
reserves  the  same  right,  using  the  same  language,  as  the
Crow Tribe’s treaty.1  Race Horse argued that he had the 

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1 The  Shoshone-Bannock  Treaty  reserved  “ ‘the  right  to  hunt  on  the