Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/18pdf/17-532_q86b.pdf
Page Number: 7.0

4 

HERRERA v. WYOMING 

Opinion of the Court 

may  be  found  thereon,  and  as  long  as  peace  subsists
among  the  whites  and  Indians  on  the  borders  of  the 
hunting districts.”  Id., at 650. 

A  few  months  after  the  1868  Treaty  signing,  Congress 
established  the  Wyoming  Territory.    Congress  provided 
that  the  establishment  of  this  new  Territory  would  not 
“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.”  An  Act  to  Provide  a 
Temporary  Government  for  the  Territory  of  Wyoming
(Wyoming  Territory  Act),  July  25,  1868,  ch.  235,  15  Stat.
178.  Around  two  decades  later,  the  people  of  the  new 
Territory adopted a constitution and requested admission
to the United States.  In 1890, Congress formally admitted 
Wyoming  “into  the  Union  on  an  equal  footing  with  the 
original  States  in  all  respects,”  in  an  Act  that  did  not 
mention  Indian  treaty  rights.    An  Act  to  Provide  for  the 
Admission  of  the  State  of  Wyoming  into  the  Union  (Wyo-
ming Statehood Act), July 10, 1890, ch. 664, 26 Stat. 222. 
Finally, in 1897, President Grover Cleveland set apart an
area in Wyoming as a public land reservation and declared
the land “reserved from entry or settlement.”  Presidential 
Proclamation No. 30, 29 Stat. 909.  This area, made up of
lands ceded by the Crow Tribe in 1868, became known as 
the Bighorn National Forest.  See App. 234; Crow Tribe of 
Indians v. Repsis, 73 F. 3d 982, 985 (CA10 1995). 

B 
Petitioner  Clayvin  Herrera  is  a  member  of  the  Crow 
Tribe  who  resides  on  the  Crow  Reservation  in  Montana. 
In  2014,  Herrera  and  other  Tribe  members  pursued  a 
group of elk past the boundary of the reservation and into 
the  neighboring  Bighorn  National  Forest  in  Wyoming. 
They  shot  several  bull  elk  and  returned  to  Montana  with 
the  meat.  The  State  of  Wyoming  charged  Herrera  for 
taking  elk  off-season  or  without  a  state  hunting  license