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Page Number: 15

12 

MCGIRT v. OKLAHOMA 

Opinion of the Court 

Act  of  1887,  and  for  the  Creek  specifically  in  1901.  No 
doubt, this is why Congress at the turn of the 20th century
“believed  to  a  man”  that  “the  reservation  system  would 
cease” “within a generation at most.” Solem, 465 U. S., at 
468.  Still, just as wishes are not laws, future plans aren’t
either.  Congress may have passed allotment laws to create 
the  conditions  for  disestablishment.    But  to  equate  allot-
ment with disestablishment would confuse the first step of
a march with arrival at its destination.4 

Ignoring this distinction would run roughshod over many
other statutes as well.  In some cases, Congress chose not 
to wait for allotment to run its course before disestablishing
a reservation.  When it deemed that approach appropriate,
Congress  included  additional  language  expressly  ending 
reservation status.  So, for example, in 1904, Congress al-
lotted reservations belonging to the Ponca and Otoe Tribes,
reservations also lying within modern-day Oklahoma, and 
then  provided  “further,  That  the  reservation  lines  of  the 
said . . . reservations . . . are hereby abolished.”  Act of Apr.
21, 1904, §8, 33 Stat. 217–218 (emphasis deleted); see also 
DeCoteau v. District County Court for Tenth Judicial Dist., 
420 U. S. 425, 439–440, n. 22 (1975) (collecting other exam-
ples).  Tellingly, however, nothing like that can be found in
the nearly contemporary 1901 Creek Allotment Agreement 
or the 1908 Act.  That doesn’t make these laws special.  Ra-
ther, in using the language that they did, these allotment
laws tracked others of the period, parceling out individual 

—————— 

4 The dissent seemingly conflates these steps in other ways, too, by im-
plying that the passage of an allotment Act itself extinguished title.  Post, 
at 18–19.  The reality proved more complicated.  Allotment of the Creek 
lands did not occur overnight, but dragged on for years, well past Okla-
homa’s  statehood,  until  Congress  finally  prohibited  any  further  allot-
ments more than 15 years later.  Act of Mar. 2, 1917, 39 Stat. 986.