Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/19pdf/18-9526_9okb.pdf
Page Number: 28.0

Cite as:  591 U. S. ____ (2020) 

25 

Opinion of the Court 

National  Council  (May  7,  1901),  reprinted  in  The  Indian
Journal (May 10, 1901)).  Surely, too, the future looked even
bleaker: “ ‘The remnant of a government now accorded to us 
can be expected to be maintained only until all settlements
of our landed and other interests growing out of treaty stip-
ulations  with  the  government  of  the  United  States  shall 
have been settled.’ ”  Ibid. 

But note the nature of these statements.  The Creek Na-
tion recognized that the federal government will seek to get 
popular  support  or  otherwise  would  force  change.  Like-
wise,  the  Tribe’s  government  would  continue  for  only  so
long.  These were prophesies, and hardly groundbreaking
ones  at  that.  After  all,  the  1901  Creek  Allotment  Agree-
ment explicitly said that the tribal government “shall not 
continue”  past  1906.  §46,  31  Stat.  872.  So  what  might
statements like these tell us that isn’t already evident from 
the  statutes  themselves?  Oklahoma  doesn’t  suggest  they
shed light on the meaning of some disputed and ambiguous 
statutory direction.  More nearly, the State seeks to render 
the Creek’s fears self-fulfilling.12 

We  are  also  asked  to  consider  commentary  from  those 
outside  the  Tribe.  In  particular,  the  dissent  reports  that
the federal government “operated” on the “understanding”
that  the  reservation  was  disestablished.    Post,  at  32.  In 
support of its claim, the dissent highlights a 1941 statement 
from Felix Cohen.  Then serving as an official at the Interior 
Department, Cohen opined that “ ‘all offenses by or against 
Indians’ in the former Indian Territory ‘are subject to State 
—————— 

12 The dissent finds the statements of the Creek leadership so proba-
tive that it cites them not just as evidence about the meaning of treaties 
the Tribe signed but even as evidence about the meaning of general pur-
pose laws the Creek had no hand in.  See post, at 26 (citing Chief Porter’s
views on the legal effects of the Oklahoma Enabling Act).  That is quite 
a stretch from using tribal statements as “historical evidence of ‘the man-
ner in which [treaties were] negotiated’ with the . . . Tribe.”  Parker, 577 
U. S., at ___ (slip op., at 9) (quoting Solem v. Bartlett, 465 U. S. 463, 471 
(1984)).