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Page Number: 24

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

21 

Opinion of the Court 

over  the  forest  territory,  including  federal  regulation  of 
  Brief  for  Respondent  56–60.  But  as  ex-
those  lands.
plained, the treaty’s text and the historical record suggest 
that the phrase “unoccupied lands” had a specific meaning 
to the Crow Tribe: lack of settlement.  The proclamation of 
a  forest  reserve  withdrawing  land  from  settlement  would
not  categorically  transform  the  territory  into  an  area 
resided  on  or  settled  by  non-Indians;  quite  the  opposite. 
Nor  would  the  restrictions  on  hunting  in  national  forests
that  Wyoming  cites.  See  Appropriations  Act  of  1899,  ch.
424,  30  Stat.  1095;  36  CFR  §§241.2,  241.3  (Supp.  1941); 
§261.10(d)(1) (2018).

Wyoming  also  claims  that  exploitative  mining  and
logging of the forest lands prior to 1897 would have caused 
the  Crow  Tribe  to  view  the  Bighorn  Mountains  as  occu-
pied.  But  the  presence  of  mining  and  logging  operations 
did  not  amount  to  settlement  of  the  sort  that  the  Tribe 
would have understood as rendering the forest occupied.  In 
fact,  the  historical  source  on  which  Wyoming  primarily 
relies  indicates  that  there  was  “very  little”  settlement  of 
Bighorn  National  Forest  around  the  time  the  forest  was 
created.  Dept.  of  Interior,  Nineteenth  Ann.  Rep.  of  the
U. S. Geological Survey 167 (1898). 

Considering the terms of the 1868 Treaty as they would 
have been understood by the Crow Tribe, we conclude that 
the creation of Bighorn National Forest did not remove the 
forest lands, in their entirety, from the scope of the treaty. 

IV 
Finally, we note two ways in which our decision is lim-
ited.  First,  we  hold  that  Bighorn  National  Forest  is  not 
categorically occupied, not that all areas within the forest
are unoccupied.  On remand, the State may argue that the 
specific site where Herrera hunted elk was used in such a 
way that it was “occupied” within the meaning of the 1868 
Treaty.  See State v. Cutler, 109 Idaho 448, 451, 708 P. 2d