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ROSEBUD SIOUX TRIBE V. KNEIP, 430 U. S. 584 (1977)
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REHNQUIST, J., delivered the opinion of the Court, in which BURGER, C.J.,and WHITE, BLACKMUN, POWELL, and STEVENS, JJ., joined. MARSHALL, J., filed a dissenting opinion, in which BRENNAN and STEWART, JJ., joined, post, p. 430 U. S. 615. chanrobles.com-red
375 F.Supp. 1065, 1084, denied relief. It concluded that Congress had intended to diminish the Reservation so as to exclude the four counties in South Dakota affected by the 1904, the 1907, and the 1910 Acts. The United States Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit, in a careful and comprehensive opinion, affirmed the judgment of the District Court. 521 F.2d 87. We granted certiorari, 425 U.S. 989, to review this determination in the light of our recent decisions in DeCoteau v. District County Court, 420 U. S. 425 (1975), and Mattz v. Arnett, 412 U. S. 481 (1973). Since we conclude that the three Acts chanrobles.com-red
McClanahan v. Arizona State Tax Comm'n, 411 U. S. 164, 411 U. S. 174 (1973), quoting Carpenter v. Shaw, 280 U. S. 363, 280 U. S. 367 (1930); see also Mattz v. Arnett, supra at 412 U. S. 505. The mere fact that a reservation has been opened to settlement does not necessarily mean that the opened area has lost its reservation chanrobles.com-red
status. Mattz v. Arnett, supra; see also Seymour v. Superintendent, 368 U. S. 351 (1962). But the "general rule" does not command a determination that reservation status survives in the face of congressionally manifested intent to the contrary. DeCoteau v. District County Court, supra. In all cases, "the face of the Act," the "surrounding circumstances," and the "legislative history," are to be examined with an eye toward determining what congressional intent was. Mattz v. Arnett, supra at 412 U. S. 505.
Applying these principles to the facts of this case, we conclude that the Acts of 1904, 1907, and 1910 did clearly evidence congressional intent to diminish the boundaries of the Rosebud Sioux Reservation. The parties agree that an amendment to the 1889 Treaty, which provided for a fixed-sum payment and which was approved by three-fourths of the Rosebud Sioux Tribe's adult males in 1901, would have resulted in the diminution of the Rosebud Reservation boundaries. Congress did not, however, approve the 1901 amendment to the Treaty which the Tribe had ratified. The Tribe contends that, lacking tribal ratification and a fixed-sum provision, the later Acts were ineffectual to accomplish this same result. In the Tribe's view, the absence of these two factors vitally distinguishes the Acts in question from the otherwise similar Act examined in DeCoteau v. District County Court, supra. Because of the reasons hereafter set forth in greater detail, we conclude that, although the Acts of 1904, 1907, and 1910 were unilateral Acts of Congress without the consent of three-quarters of the members of the tribe required by the original Treaty, [Footnote 2] that fact does not have any direct bearing on the question of whether Congress, by these later Acts, did intend to diminish the Reservation boundaries. By the time of chanrobles.com-red
the first of these Acts, in 1904, Congress was aware of the decision of this Court in Lone Wolf v. Hitchcock, 187 U. S. 553 (1903), which held that Congress possessed the authority to abrogate unilaterally the provisions of an Indian treaty. We also conclude that the changed method of payment is not conclusive with respect to congressional intent. Although the later Acts of Congress made less secure provisions for payment to the Tribe for the lands in question than did the 1901 Treaty, their language with respect to the reservation status of the opened lands was identical with or derivative from the language used in that proposed amendment. [Footnote 3] The language was also substantially equivalent to that used in the executed agreement involved in DeCoteau. We agree with the Court of Appeals and the District Court that this language not only opened the land for settlement, but diminished the boundaries of the Reservation pro tanto. [Footnote 4] chanrobles.com-red
The Rosebud Sioux are one of the tribes of Indians of the Sioux Nation. The Treaty of April 29, 1868, 15 Stat. 635, set aside all the land in South Dakota west of the Missouri River as the Great Sioux Reservation, consisting of some 25 million acres. Article 12 of the Treaty provided that no subsequent treaty for the cession of any part of the reservation would be valid without the written consent of three-fourths of the adult male Indians on the reservation. Despite this provision, in 1877, approximately 7.5 million acres, consisting of the Black Hills portion of the Great Sioux Reservation, were removed from the Reservation by the Act of February 28, 1877, 19 Stat. 254. See Sioux Tribe of Indians v. United States, 97 Ct.Cl. 613 (1942), cert. denied, 318 U.S. 789 (1943). Of the remaining Reservation, approximately one-half was "restored to the public domain" under the Act of March 2, 1889, 25 Stat. 896, § 21, [Footnote 5] while six separate Reservations were carved out of the remainder, §§ 1-6. Section 2 set apart the Rosebud Reservation, encompassing what were later organized as three full counties (Todd, Mellette, and Tripp), a major portion of Gregory County, and a small portion of Lyman. [Footnote 6] This Reservation, as originally delimited, contained over 3.2 million acres. chanrobles.com-red
Shortly thereafter, Inspector James McLaughlin was instructed by the Commissioner of Indian Affairs to begin "negotiations with the Indians of the Rosebud reservation, in South Dakota, for the cession of the unallotted eastern portion of their reserve." Letter dated Mar. 19, 1901, from W. A. Jones, Commissioner, Office of Indian Affairs, Department of Interior. Following meetings with members of the Tribe during the spring and summer of 1901, Inspector McLaughlin obtained the written consent of three-fourths of the chanrobles.com-red
male Indian adults to the cession of some 416,000 acres of unallotted land in Gregory County for the sum of $1,040,000, subject to congressional ratification. [Footnote 8] The negotiated Agreement, however, was never ratified, [Footnote 9] "because of the fact that it provided that the Government should pay for the lands outright. . . ." 38 Cong.Rec. 1423 (1904) (remarks of Rep. Burke). [Footnote 10]
reservation about the size and area of Pine Ridge Reservation. [Footnote 11]"
The Senate bill, S. 7390, passed the Senate in February, 36 Cong.Rec. 2748 (1903), but the 57th Congress expired before the House could give it consideration. In line with the changes in S. 7390, which related to the method of payment, Inspector McLaughlin was subsequently instructed to go to the Rosebud Reservation to negotiate a new chanrobles.com-red
agreement. [Footnote 13] He explained to the Rosebud Tribe:
Inspector McLaughlin failed to get three-fourths of the adult male Indians to consent to this new method of payment, although he did obtain the consent of a majority, provided that the price to homesteaders be raised from $2.50 to $2.75 per acre. Agreement of Aug. 10, 1903. [Footnote 15] However, chanrobles.com-red
as Inspector McLaughlin had explained to the Tribe, [Footnote 16] Congress understood that it was not bound by the three-fourths consent requirement of the 1868 Treaty with the Sioux Nation. In Lone Wolf v. Hitchcock, 187 U.S. at 187 U. S. 566, 568, this Court, dealing with the validity of a cession of tribal lands enacted in contravention of a treaty requiring three-fourths Indian consent, held:
In examining congressional intent, there is no indication chanrobles.com-red
"There is no question but what the Indians have no use for the land that is proposed to be ceded by this bill; that the tract is only a very small portion of the Rosebud Reservation, and is really only a corner of the reservation, which will be left compact and in a square tract and a reservation about equal in size to the Pine Ridge Reservation, in South Dakota. [Footnote 17]"
On the floor of the House, Congressman Burke, the 1904 Act's sponsor, in discussing the changes in the Agreement since chanrobles.com-red
In particular, the 1904 chanrobles.com-red
Petitioner, however, objects that a "cession" requires bilateral consent, and the failure of Inspector McLaughlin to gain the approval of three-quarters of the male adult Indians vitiates any "cession." As a matter of strict English usage, petitioner is undoubtedly correct: "cession" refers to a voluntary surrender of territory or jurisdiction, rather than a withdrawal of such jurisdiction by the authority of a superior sovereign. But as Mr. Justice (then Judge) Holmes commented, we are not free to say to Congress: "We see what you are driving at, but you have not said it, and therefore we shall go on as before." Johnson v. United States, 163 F. 30, 32 (CA1 1908). Congress was simply repeating verbatim language from a bill ratifying the 1901 Agreement, which had made the proper use of the word "cession" because the Agreement had been approved by the Tribe. The use of the word "cession" in the 1904 Act, which was not consented to by the required extraordinary majority of the Tribe, does not make the meaning of the Act ambiguous as between diminution of the Reservation boundaries on the one hand, and merely opening up designated lands for settlement by non-Indians, on the other. The word is technically misused, but the meaning is quite clear. It was chanrobles.com-red
intended to accomplish, in 1904, precisely what it was intended to accomplish in 1901. Congress was under no misapprehension that the required portion of the Tribe had in fact approved the treaty. It knew that, while a majority of the Tribe had approved it, the required extraordinary majority had not; but it had determined nonetheless to go ahead and accomplish the same result unilaterally as the Agreement would have accomplished bilaterally. [Footnote 19]
The "bill provided that the lands should be ceded by the Indians to the Government. . . ." 38 Cong.Rec. 1423 (1904) (remarks of Rep. Burke). It is clear that Congress was relying on Lone Wolf v. Hitchcock, 187 U. S. 553 (1903), in making this unilateral declaration. There is nothing in the changed method of payment, or the failure to obtain a three-quarters vote from the Indians, which indicates that the clear intent of the 1901 Agreement to diminish the Reservation boundaries had changed between 1901 and 1904. [Footnote 20] The Tribe, moreover, was eventually paid for the land, supra at 430 U. S. 588 n. 3. chanrobles.com-red
The language of § 10 is mandatory: "nor shall" the 16th and 36th sections of lands within Indian reservations "be subject to the grants . . . until the reservation shall have been extinguished. . . ." While Congress would have had the power to establish other grants, cf. 43 U.S.C. § 856, the legislative history, in this case, demonstrates that Congress "included the provision to implement the grant in the enabling act, and for no other reason." 521 F.2d 101. [Footnote 21] Both the House and Senate Reports explicitly noted that the "school sections" provision of what became the 1904 Act "is in conformity with the guarantee given to the State of South Dakota by Congress in the enabling act. . . ." [Footnote 22] Congress, therefore, clearly thought that it was acting pursuant to § 10 of the Act of February 22, 1889, and not sub silentio adding an additional grant for chanrobles.com-red
school lands located within a continuing reservation. [Footnote 23] The far more natural construction, then, is to read a congressional intent to disestablish Gregory County from the Rosebud Reservation, thereby making the sections available for disposition to the State of South Dakota for "school sections" under § 10 of the Act of February 22, 1889. [Footnote 24] chanrobles.com-red
(Emphasis supplied.) The opening portion of the Proclamation is an unambiguous, contemporaneous, statement, by the Nation's Chief Executive, chanrobles.com-red
Although the subsequent "jurisdictional history," DeCoteau v. District County Court, 420 U.S. at 420 U. S. 442, is not entirely clear, the single most salient fact is the unquestioned actual assumption of state jurisdiction over the unallotted lands in Gregory County since the passage of the 1904 Act, see 375 F.Supp. at 1084; Amended Complaint ¦ 21. [Footnote 26] Since state chanrobles.com-red
jurisdiction over the area within a reservation's boundaries is quite limited, 18 U.S.C. § 1151; McClanahan v. Arizona State Tax Comm'n, 411 U. S. 164 (1973); Wlliams v. Lee, 358 U. S. 217 (1959); Worcester v. Georgia, 6 Pet. 515 (1832), the fact that neither Congress nor the Department of Indian Affairs has sought to exercise its authority over this area or to challenge the State's exercise of authority is a factor entitled to weight as a part of the "jurisdictional history." [Footnote 27] The longstanding chanrobles.com-red
assumption of jurisdiction by the State over an area that is over 90% non-Indian, both in population and in land use, not only demonstrates the parties' understanding of the meaning of the Act, but has created justifiable expectations which should not be upset by so strained a reading of the Acts of Congress as petitioner urges. [Footnote 28] We are simply unable to conclude that the intent of the 1904 Act was other than to disestablish.
Having determined that the 1904 Act carried forth the intent to disestablish which was unquestionably manifested in the 1901 Agreement, our examination of the 1907 and the chanrobles.com-red
1910 Acts is made easier. None of the parties really disputes that the intent of the three Acts was the same. [Footnote 29] Because the later Acts do vary in some respects, however, we shall explain briefly why we find a continuity of intent through the 1907 and the 1910 Acts. [Footnote 30]
The "familiar forces" at work pressing for the opening of Indian lands did not cease with the cession of Gregory County. By late 1906, Congressman Burke was preparing a bill dealing with the "sale of that part of the reservation located in Tripp County." [Footnote 31] Inspector McLaughlin was instructed to proceed to the Rosebud Reservation to negotiate an agreement for land in Tripp County which, when "ceded, should be disposed of under the general provisions of the homestead and townsite laws of the United States," and he was given suggested terms, "similar to those in the disposal chanrobles.com-red
of the ceded lands in Gregory County. . . . " [Footnote 32] Inspector McLaughlin's negotiations produced virtually the same result as in 1904. A 1907 Agreement, signed by a majority, but not by three-fourths, of the adult male Indians provided that the Indians
In virtually all respects, then, except for the operative language in § 1 replacing the Agreement language, the 1907 chanrobles.com-red
Act is a functional twin of the 1904 Act. And, as the legislative comments make clear, supra at 430 U. S. 607-608, the change in § 1 language was not intended to modify or change the purposes or operation of the 1904 Act. [Footnote 38] We agree with the Court of Appeals' conclusion, 521 F.2d 104:
The pressures for more land had not yet expended themselves with the passage of the 1907 Act. In late 1908, Senator Gamble submitted a new bill authorizing the sale and disposition of a portion of the surplus and unallotted lands in Mellette County and in a strip located in the eastern part of Todd County, S. 7379, 43 Cong.Rec. 65 (1908). The accompanying Senate Report noted, in proposing the opening to settlement of an area comprising about 900,000 acres, that "[t]he present area of the Rosebud Indian Reservation aggregates 1,800,000 acres." S.Rep. No. 887, 60th Cong., 2d Sess., 1 (1909) (emphasis supplied). [Footnote 39] The school sections chanrobles.com-red
provision was again included in the bill, "to be paid for by the Government in conformity with the provisions of the act admitting the State of South Dakota into the Union." Id. at 2. [Footnote 40] Senator Gamble was unable to have the Senate consider the bill before the term of Congress expired, and Inspector McLaughlin was once again dispatched to conduct negotiations with the Rosebud Tribe concerning the Gamble bill. [Footnote 41] This time he did not seek to negotiate an agreement with the Indians, but reported back to the Secretary of the Interior the "practically unanimous" concurrence of the Indians
tiers of townships in the eastern part of Meyer [sic] County remain a part of the diminished reservation. [Footnote 42]"
The 1910 Act is substantially similar to the 1907 Act, and chanrobles.com-red
This proviso, on its face, is a strong indication of the continuing intent to disestablish the affected areas, first manifested in the 1901 Agreement. The second is the provision in § 10 of the 1910 Act, included at the suggestion of the Secretary of the Interior, subjecting the opened land "for a period of twenty-five years to all the laws of the United States prohibiting the introduction of intoxicants into the Indian country." As there existed, in 1910, an outstanding prohibition against the introduction of intoxicants into "Indian country," see Act of July 23, 1892, 27 Stat. 260, the most reasonable inference from the inclusion of this provision is that Congress was aware that the opened, unallotted areas would henceforth not be "Indian country," because not in the Reservation. [Footnote 47] chanrobles.com-red
These added provisions, as well as the clear legislative history of the 1910 Act, reflect strongly the continued intent to diminish the Reservation boundaries. We conclude that chanrobles.com-red
521 F.2d 102. DeCoteau rested upon precisely such a determination, and neither the sum certain nor the consent was considered dispositive one way or the other. The statutory language discussed in DeCoteau is similar to the language of the 1904 Act. While the 1904 Act, to be sure, lacks a sum-certain payment, as well as approval by three-fourths of the adult male Indians, it, in common with DeCoteau, starts from the form of an agreement, which was fully explained to the Rosebud Tribe both in 1901 and in 1904. The congressional recognition "that the Agreement could not be altered," 420 U.S. at 420 U. S. 438, was not present in this case for the simple reason that, between the Sisseton-Wahpeton Agreement and the 1904 Rosebud Act, Lone Wolf v. Hitchcock, supra, had been decided. Nor is there any "clear retreat from previous congressional attempts to vacate the . . . Reservation in express terms," DeCoteau v. District County Court, supra at 420 U. S. 448, as there was in Mattz v. Arnett. Finally, as is discussed, infra at 430 U. S. 603-605, as in DeCoteau, the State has exercised unquestioned jurisdiction over the disputed area since the passage of the enactment an indication of the intended purpose of the Act that was not present in Mattz v. Arnett, 412 U.S. at 412 U. S. 505. Moreover, other factors, not present in DeCoteau, press for a finding of disestablishment. Here, for example, unlike the situation in DeCoteau, we are not faced with an Act which, if it disestablished the area under question, would terminate the entire reservation, 420 U.S. at 420 U. S. 446-447. Considered together, we feel that those disestablishment factors present in DeCoteau but not present here are counterbalanced by the disestablishment factors present both here and in DeCoteau, as well as those factors present here, but not in DeCoteau.
521 F.2d 102. The question of whether lands become "public lands" under Hitchcock and Ash Sheep is therefore logically separate from a question of disestablishment. United States v. Pelican, supra. As the issue is not before us, we need not decide whether or not the lands became "public lands."
As noted by the Court of Appeals, 521 F.2d 102 n. 54:
Cf. Massachusetts v. New York, 271 U. S. 65, 271 U. S. 87, 271 U. S. 94 (1926); 41 U. S. 411-412, 41 U. S. 414, 41 U. S. 418 (1842). A showing of longstanding assumption of jurisdiction is, in the related area of state boundary disputes, entitled to considerable weight. See 45 U. S. 636 (1846); Louisiana v. Mississippi, 202 U. S. 1, 202 U. S. 53-54 (1906); Michigan v. Wisconsin, 270 U. S. 295, 270 U. S. 308 (1926); Massachusetts v. New York, supra at 271 U. S. 95; Arkansas v. Tennessee, 310 U. S. 563, 310 U. S. 569 (1940). In @ 69 U. S. 537 (1865), involving a boundary between the Delaware Indian Reservation and land set aside for a United States Government military post this Court stated:
The Court holds today that, in 1904, 1907, and 1910, Congress broke solemn promises it had made to the Rosebud chanrobles.com-red
Sioux Tribe and took from them, without any guarantee of compensation, three-quarters of their reservation. Although it was suggested at argument, Tr. of Oral Arg. 120, that the only consequence of such a holding would be to preclude the Tribe from continuing to exercise the jurisdiction granted to it by its approved constitution and bylaws, [Footnote 2/1] in fact, much more is at stake. This case involves not just the rights of the Tribe, but also the rights of approximately 2,000 Indians living in the disputed area, and the right of the United States to continue to administer the disputed area as part of the Rosebud Reservation. [Footnote 2/2] See 430 U. S. infra. In addition, the chanrobles.com-red
The Acts in question contain no similar language. The Act of April 23, 1904, 33 Stat. 254, is a peculiarly drafted statute. In substance, it is no different from the chanrobles.com-red
statutes considered in Mattz and Seymour; it opens lands on the Reservation to white settlers, guarantees to the Indians the proceeds from the sale of the lands, but does not commit the United States to purchasing the land. [Footnote 2/4] In form, however, the Act "amended and modified," and then "ratified," the 1901 Agreement between Inspector McLaughlin and the Rosebud Sioux in which the Tribe agreed to sell the lands in question to the United States for a lump sum; this Agreement had been rejected by the Congress in 1902. The "amendments" which Congress unilaterally inserted obviously were substantial, since they transformed the transaction from a DeCoteau-type purchase to a Mattz-type "opening." But because the ratification format was used, the 1904 Act contains language from the 1901 Agreement which provided that the
In DeCoteau, we stated that this language, when contained in an agreement approved by the Indians and ratified by Congress, is "precisely suited," 420 U.S. at 420 U. S. 445, to terminating a reservation. But I cannot agree with the Court, ante at 430 U. S. 597, that the language is equally well suited to disestablish the Reservation here. Its usage may simply mean that Congress found that working from an earlier document -- in this case the 1901 Agreement -- was easier than drafting a new law. Whereas, in DeCoteau, the key phrase expressed the Indians' understanding of what they were surrendering and the Government's understanding of what it was acquiring, here, the Indians had not agreed to this transaction, and the Government disclaimed any intent to purchase anything other than school chanrobles.com-red
lands, see n 4, supra. Indeed, as the Court concedes, ante at 430 U. S. 597, as a matter of English usage, the words "cede, surrender, grant, and convey," make no sense in the context of an "agreement" to which the seller has not assented. Thus the Court ultimately rests its decision on an asserted ability to "see what [Congress is] driving at,'" even though Congress has "`not said it.'" Ibid.
Since congressional intent must be unambiguous before we can conclude that Congress terminated part of an Indian reservation, the absence of any express provision to this effect in the Rosebud Acts strongly militates against the interpretation the Court places on those Acts. But I need not rely on congressional silence alone -- eloquent as it may be -- to reject the Court's interpretation. For both the text of the chanrobles.com-red
The text of the Acts provides numerous indications that Congress did not intend to remove the opened areas from the Reservation. First, the Acts granted the Indians a variety of rights in those areas. All three Acts, for example, permitted Indians with allotments in the counties to be opened to retain their allotments, [Footnote 2/5] and the 1907 and 1910 Acts also allowed certain Indians without allotments in these counties to secure allotments there. [Footnote 2/6] All three Acts also granted the Indians a beneficial interest in all the opened lands, since the Acts simply made the United States "trustee for [the] Indians to dispose of said lands." [Footnote 2/7] And the 1904 and 1910 chanrobles.com-red
Acts authorized the Executive, before opening the counties to settlers, to reserve some lands for Indian schools, religious missions, and service agencies. [Footnote 2/8] Of course, it is possible that Congress intended to remove the opened counties from the Reservation while leaving the Indians with a host of rights in the counties. But this interpretation of the statutes is surely strained, especially since nothing in the legislative history indicates that such an anomalous result was desired. Thus, it is far more sensible to view these grants to the Indians as evidence that Congress did not intend to terminate the Reservation immediately.
This interpretation is supported by other provisions in the Acts as well. In the 1907 and 1910 Acts, for example, Congress directed that payments received from sale of the lands to be opened were to be deposited "to the credit of the Indians belonging and having tribal rights on the Rosebud Reservation." [Footnote 2/9] If the Rosebud Acts also removed the opened counties from the Reservation, then the members of the Tribe living in Gregory County, opened in 1904, were not entitled to share in the proceeds of the 1907 or 1910 sales, and the members of the Tribe living in Tripp County, opened by the Act of 1907, were not entitled to the 1910 proceeds, at the very least. [Footnote 2/10] Again, it is possible that Congress intended chanrobles.com-red
These provisions constitute clear congressional commands to interpret the Rosebud Acts so as to minimize conflicts with the Treaty of 1889. Yet the Court ignores these provisions, and maximizes the conflict, by construing the Acts to limit not just the Rosebud Sioux's land use, but also their jurisdiction. [Footnote 2/12] chanrobles.com-red
The Court ultimately rests its construction of the Acts on an analysis of their legislative history. While there may be occasional passages in the history that suggest an intent to terminate, [Footnote 2/13] I cannot agree that such an intent is established with anything approaching the requisite clarity. chanrobles.com-red
In the first place, the legislative history of the Rosebud Acts is extraordinarily sparse. The 1904 Act, which the Court properly regards as the crucial Act, was introduced by Representative Burke of South Dakota on January 19, 1904, 38 Cong.Rec. 902-903; was reported out of the Committee on Indian Affairs, which Mr. Burke chaired, two days later, id. at 1010; and passed the House on February 1, id. at 1469, after a debate that consumes only six pages in the Congressional Record, id. at 1423-1429. [Footnote 2/14] The bill was transmitted to the Senate the same day; was reported out of the Committee chaired by Senator Gamble of South Dakota three days later, id. at 1601; and was called up, amended, and approved by the Senate without debate on April 18, id. at 4988. [Footnote 2/15] The House concurred in the Senate amendments the following day without any discussion. Id. at 5155. The 1907 Act received chanrobles.com-red
even less congressional attention. It was approved within one month after it was introduced without any debate in the Senate, 41 Cong.Rec. 3323 (1907), and with a debate in the House that occupies only one page in the Record, id. at 3104. [Footnote 2/16] Only the 1910 Act was seriously debated by Congress, and these debates focused almost exclusively on the method by which the opened lands would be distributed to white settlers. 45 Cong.Rec. 1066-1071, 5456-5473 (1910).
In light of the brevity of the debates, it is not surprising that there is a paucity of relevant materials. The Court finds just two quotations from the debates, ante at 430 U. S. 596, 430 U. S. 608, and three quotations from the Committee Reports, ante at 430 U. S. 595, 430 U. S. 611, 430 U. S. 612, that directly bear on the disestablishment issue. [Footnote 2/17] What the Court cannot find, however, is particularly telling. Unlike the debates in Mattz, which revealed that "the establishment of the reservation . . . was viewed as a mistake and an injustice," 412 U.S. at 412 U. S. 500, there were no expressions of hostility toward the existence or size of the Rosebud Reservation. Nor were there any statements indicating that Congress intended to deviate from its general policy of preserving reservations or to abandon its role as guardian of the Indians living in the opened counties. Indeed, although Congress was chanrobles.com-red
aware that the Rosebud Acts initiated a new policy toward surplus lands [Footnote 2/18] -- one which removed the Government from the role of buyer and the Indians from the role of seller -- at no point in the debates did anyone discuss the consequences of this change on Reservation boundaries.
Ante at 430 U. S. 591. Its review of the legislative history then leads it to conclude that "there is no indication that Congress intended to change anything other than the form of, and responsibility for, payment." Ante at 430 U. S. 594-595. But the fact that Congress did not expressly repudiate all of the consequences of an Agreement to which it was not a party and which it had refused to ratify hardly establishes that Congress affirmatively intended those consequences to result from the very different transaction it devised in 1904. [Footnote 2/19] It is at least chanrobles.com-red
Ultimately, what the legislative history demonstrates, as cocounsel for the State has aptly concluded, is that Congress manifested an "almost complete lack of . . . concern with the boundary issue." [Footnote 2/20] The issue was of no great importance in the early 1900's, as it was commonly assumed that all reservations would be abolished when the trust period on allotted lands expired. There was no pressure on Congress to accelerate this timetable, so long as settlers could acquire unused land. Accordingly, Congress simply did not focus on the boundary question. Its indifference is perhaps best manifested by the fact that, in legislation concerning the Reservation enacted immediately subsequent to the Rosebud Acts, Congress at times referred to the opened counties as part of the Reservation, and at times referred to them as no longer part of the Reservation. [Footnote 2/21] For the Court to find in this confusion chanrobles.com-red
Seymour v. Superintendent, 368 U.S. at 368 U. S. 358. In addition, even while on their trust lands, the almost 2,000 enrolled Indians in the opened counties will be generally subject to "state law otherwise applicable to all citizens of the State," Mescalero Apache Tribe v. Jones, 411 U. S. 145, 411 U. S. 149 (1973), even if the same law could not be applied to Reservation Indians because it would "interfere with reservation self-government or would impair a right granted or reserved chanrobles.com-red
by federal law," id..at 411 U. S. 148. This is reason enough to be troubled by today's decision.
Finally, today's decision may result in a sharp reduction in the federal aid available to members of the Rosebud Tribe living off the Reservation. The Bureau of Indian Affairs has been administering the opened counties as part of the Reservation, see n 2, supra, and, in requesting appropriations for the Reservation Indians, has included Indians living in the chanrobles.com-red
opened counties, Brief for United States as Amicus Curiae 37-38. In addition, we have been advised by the Association on American Indian Affairs et al., as amici curiae, that the Rosebud Tribe has received a large amount of federal aid pursuant to a variety of federal programs. Brief 31-39. The Association reports that, in the past, the Tribe has been able to expend these monies for programs in the opened, as well as the closed, counties because the federal agencies have viewed all the counties as part of the Reservation. Ibid. But in light of today's decision, the Tribe's ability to use federal funds to benefit tribal members living in these counties is in serious doubt. [Footnote 2/24]
Nor are these potential consequences limited to the Rosebud Reservation. The Rosebud Acts were described by their sponsors as the beginning of a new policy with respect to surplus lands. See n 18, supra. During the decade following the enactment of the first Rosebud Act, Congress passed 21 other statutes that opened surplus reservation lands to settlers. [Footnote 2/25] If the Rosebud Acts diminished the Rosebud Reservation, chanrobles.com-red
The United States did agree, in § 4 of the Act, to purchase sections 16 and 36 of Gregory County and to grant these sections to the State for school purposes. The significance of this grant is discussed in 430 U. S. 12, infra.
The Court concludes that two other provisions in the Acts support its interpretation. First, it notes, ante at 430 U. S. 599-601, 430 U. S. 608, that, in all three Acts, Congress agreed to purchase two sections of the opened counties for school purposes. See 430 U. S. 600. But if that were true, the provisions in question would have been unnecessary, since the grant in the enabling Act was self-executing. Minnesota v. Hitchcock, 185 U. S. 373, 185 U. S. 392-393 (1902). Indeed, in 1902, the House Committee on Indian Affairs had reached this conclusion with respect to the proposed bill ratifying the 1901 Agreement, and, accordingly, it had deleted the school provisions from the Senate version of the bill. H.R.Rep. No. 2099, 57th Cong., 1st Sess., 1 (1902). Since the Committee included school provisions in the subsequent Rosebud Acts, e.g., H.R.Rep. No. 443, supra at 2, it apparently believed that the change in the nature of the transaction meant that Congress was no longer extinguishing the Reservation and restoring the land to the public domain. Nothing in the legislative history suggests, as the Court seems to imply, ante at 430 U. S. 601 n. 24, that Congress thought it was accomplishing the former, but not the latter.
The Court also quotes some discussions bearing on the school lands and liquor law provisions. See 430 U. S. 12, supra.