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Page Number: 37

34 

MCGIRT v. OKLAHOMA 

Opinion of the Court 

State.”  Act of Mar. 3, 1885, ch. 341, §9, 23 Stat. 385 (em-
phasis added); see also 18 U. S. C. §1151 (defining “Indian 
country” even more broadly).  By contrast, every one of the
statutes the State directs us to merely discusses the assign-
ment of cases among courts in the Indian Territory.  They
say nothing about the  division of responsibilities between 
federal  and  state  authorities  after  Oklahoma  entered  the 
Union.  And  however  enlightened  the  State  may  think  it 
was for territorial law to apply to all persons irrespective of
race, some Tribe members may see things differently, given 
that the same policy entailed the forcible closure of tribal
courts in defiance of treaty terms.

Left to hunt for some statute that might have rendered 
the  MCA  inapplicable  in  Oklahoma  after  statehood,  the
best the State can find is the Oklahoma Enabling Act.  Con-
gress adopted that law in preparation for Oklahoma’s ad-
mission in 1907.  Among its many provisions sorting out the
details associated with Oklahoma’s transition to statehood, 
the Enabling Act transferred all nonfederal cases pending
in territorial courts to Oklahoma’s new state courts.  Act of 
June  16,  1906,  §20,  34  Stat.  277;  see  also  Act  of  Mar.  4, 
1907,  §3,  34  Stat.  1287  (clarifying  treatment  of  cases  to 
which  United  States  was  a  party).  The  State  says  this
transfer made its courts the inheritors of the federal terri-
torial courts’ sweeping authority to try Indians for crimes 
committed on reservations. 

But, at best, this tells only half the story.  The Enabling
Act not only sent all nonfederal cases pending in territorial 
courts to state court.  It also transferred pending cases that
arose  “under  the  Constitution,  laws,  or  treaties  of  the 
United States” to federal district courts.  §16, 34 Stat. 277. 
Pending  criminal  cases  were  thus  transferred  to  federal 
court if the prosecution would have belonged there had the
Territory been a State at the time of the crime.  §1, 34 Stat.
1287  (amending  the  Enabling  Act).    Nor  did  the  statute 
make any  distinction between cases arising in the former