Source: https://openjurist.org/473/us/753
Timestamp: 2019-04-21 18:34:05
Document Index: 407085718

Matched Legal Cases: ['§ 564', '§ 564', '§ 564', '§ 564', '§ 564', '§ 564', '§ 564']

473 US 753 Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife v. Klamath Indian Tribe | OpenJurist
473 U.S. 753 - Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife v. Klamath Indian Tribe
473 US 753 Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife v. Klamath Indian Tribe
105 S.Ct. 3420
87 L.Ed.2d 542
OREGON DEPARTMENT OF FISH AND WILDLIFE, et al., Petitioners,
KLAMATH INDIAN TRIBE.
* In the early 19th century, the Klamath and Modoc Tribes and the Yahooskin Band of Snake Indians claimed aboriginal title to approximately 22 million acres of land extending east from the Cascade Mountains in southern Oregon. In 1864 these Tribes (now collectively known as the Klamath Indian Tribe) entered into a Treaty with the United States, ceding "all their right, title and claim to all the country claimed by them" and providing that a described tract of approximately 1.9 million acres "within the country ceded" would be set apart for them, to be "held and regarded as an Indian reservation." 16 Stat. 707, 708.1 The 1864 Treaty also provided that the Tribes would have "secured" to them "the exclusive right of taking fish in the streams and lakes, included in said reservation, and of gathering edible roots, seeds, and berries within its limits." Ibid.2 No right to hunt or fish outside the reservation was preserved.
The boundaries of the reservation were first surveyed by the United States in 1871. Members of the Tribe immediately complained that the surveyor had erroneously excluded large areas of land from the reservation as described in the 1864 Treaty. These complaints continued after the Government resurveyed the boundaries, and slightly enlarged them, in 1888. In response to these complaints, in 1896 Congress authorized a Boundary Commission to determine the amount and value of the land that had been incorrectly excluded from the reservation.3
In October 1896, the three-member Boundary Commission visited the reservation, traveled its disputed boundaries with a Klamath Indian guide, and interviewed a number of Klamath Indians who had participated in the negotiation of the 1864 Treaty. See Klamath Boundary Commission Report (Dec. 18, 1896), reprinted in S.Doc. No. 93, 54th Cong., 2d Sess., 5-19 (1897). These Indians specifically recalled that the parties to the 1864 Treaty had intended to include the Sycan and Sprague River Valleys within the eastern portion of the reservation because those valleys had been an important source of fish and game for members of the Tribe.4 Based on its review of the 1864 negotiations and the geographical description provided in the Treaty itself, the Boundary Commission concluded that over 617,000 acres of land had been erroneously excluded from the reservation in previous Government surveys. Id., at 11.
The Boundary Commission determined that the excluded land had an average value of 83.36 cents per acre. This figure took into account "the good timber land and the meadows of the Sycan and Sprague River valleys" as well as the "rocky and sterile mountain ranges, producing very ordinary timber and little grass."5 The Commission's valuation was based on the use of the land for stock grazing and as a source of timber. Its report did not discuss hunting or fishing on the excluded lands, nor did it advert to any valuation for the right to conduct such activities on the land.6
The course of negotiations with the Tribe extended over the next two years. The Tribe was assisted by counsel and actively asserted its interests when those interests diverged from the proposals of the United States.7 Yet the historical record provided by a number of congressional documents contains no reference to continuation of any special hunting or fishing rights for members of the Tribe after payment for the excluded lands. No objection by the Tribe to resolving the problem by selling the excluded lands to the Government appears anywhere in the record.8 Although one Government inspector felt that the price recommended by the Boundary Commission was too high, see n. 7, supra, the Commission's recommendation ultimately was accepted.9 The final Cession Agreement was signed by 191 adult male members of the Tribe on June 17, 1901.10
In the 1901 Agreement, the United States agreed to pay the Tribe $537,007.20 for 621,824 acres of reservation land. In return, the Tribe agreed in Article I to "cede, surrender, grant, and convey to the United States all their claim, right, title and interest in and to" that land. The reservation was thereby diminished to approximately two-thirds of its original size as described in the 1864 Treaty.11 The 1901 Agreement also provided in Article IV that "nothing in this agreement shall be construed to deprive [the Tribe] of any benefits to which they are entitled under existing treaties not inconsistent with the provisions of this agreement."
In 1954, Congress terminated federal supervision over the Klamath Tribe and its property, including the Klamath Reservation. Pub.L. 587, 68 Stat. 718-723, as amended, 25 U.S.C. §§ 564-564x. The Termination Act required members of the Tribe to elect either to withdraw from the Tribe and receive the monetary value of their interest in tribal property, or to remain in the Tribe and participate in a non-governmental tribal management plan. § 564d(a)(2). The Termination Act also authorized the sale of that portion of the reservation necessary to provide funds for the compensation of withdrawing members, and the transfer of the unsold portion to a private trustee. § 564e(a).12 The Termination Act further specified that its provisions would not "abrogate any fishing rights or privileges of the tribe or the members thereof enjoyed under Federal treaty." § 564m(b).
The essential facts were stipulated. The District Court entered summary judgment in favor of the Tribe, declaring that the 1901 Agreement "did not abrogate" the Tribe's 1864 "treaty rights . . . to hunt, fish, trap and gather, free from regulation by the . . . State of Oregon" on the ceded lands.13 The District Court relied on the language in Article IV of the 1901 Agreement preserving any benefits to which the Tribe was "entitled under existing treaties not inconsistent with the provisions of this agreement," and on the Government's failure to compensate the Tribe expressly for the loss of hunting and fishing rights either in 1901 or 1969.
Because the Court of Appeals' decision appeared to conflict in principle with the decision of the Eighth Circuit in Red Lake Band of Chippewa Indians v. Minnesota, 614 F.2d 1161 (per curiam), cert. denied, 449 U.S. 905, 101 S.Ct. 279, 66 L.Ed.2d 136 (1980),14 we granted certiorari, 469 U.S. 879, 105 S.Ct. 242, 83 L.Ed.2d 180 (1984). We now reverse.
At issue in this case is an asserted right of tribal members to hunt and fish outside the reservation boundaries established in 1901, free of state regulation. The Tribe argues that this special right continued on the lands that were ceded in the 1901 Agreement, even though the reservation boundaries were diminished and the exclusivity of the 1864 Treaty rights necessarily expired on the ceded lands. The Tribe agrees that ceded lands now privately owned may be closed to tribal hunting and fishing, and that the Federal Government validly may regulate Indian activity on the ceded lands now held as national parks or forests. See 729 F.2d, at 611; Brief for Respondent, 12, 17. It is also clear that non-Indians may hunt and fish on at least some of the ceded lands and that members of the Tribe are entitled to the same hunting and fishing privileges as all other residents of Oregon.15 Our inquiry, therefore, is whether a special right, nonexclusive but free of state regulation, was intended to survive in the face of the language of the 1901 Agreement ceding "all . . . right . . . in and to" the ceded lands.16
The Court of Appeals' holding was predicated on its understanding that the hunting and fishing rights reserved to the Tribe by the 1864 Treaty were not appurtenant to the land within the reservation boundaries. 729 F.2d, at 612. We agree with the Court of Appeals that Indians may enjoy special hunting and fishing rights that are independent of any ownership of land,17 and that, as demonstrated in 25 U.S.C. § 564m(b), the 1954 Termination Act for the Klamath Tribe, such rights may survive the termination of an Indian reservation.18 Moreover, the Court of Appeals was entirely correct in its view that doubts concerning the meaning of a treaty with an Indian tribe should be resolved in favor of the tribe. See Washington v. Washington Commercial Passenger Fishing Vessel Assn., 443 U.S. 658, 675-676, 99 S.Ct. 3055, 3069, 61 L.Ed.2d 823 (1979); Carpenter v. Shaw, 280 U.S. 363, 367, 50 S.Ct. 121, 122, 74 L.Ed. 478 (1930). Nevertheless, we cannot agree with the court's interpretation of the 1901 Cession Agreement or with its reading of the 1864 Treaty.
Before the 1864 Treaty was executed, the Tribe claimed aboriginal title to about 22 million acres of land. The Treaty language that ceded that entire tract—except for the 1.9 million acres set apart for the Klamath Reservation—stated only that the Tribe ceded "all their right, title, and claim" to the described area. Yet that general conveyance unquestionably carried with it whatever special hunting and fishing rights the Indians had previously possessed in over 20 million acres outside the reservation. Presumptively, the similar language used in the 1901 Cession Agreement should have the same effect.
More importantly, the language of the 1864 Treaty plainly describes rights intended to be exercised within the limits of the reservation. This point can be best understood by consideration of the entire portion of the Treaty in which the right of taking fish is described. The relevant language of the 1864 Treaty is found in Article I: "That the following described tract, within the country ceded by this treaty, shall, until otherwise directed by the President of the United States, be set apart as a residence for said Indians, [and] held and regarded as an Indian reservation. . . . And the tribes aforesaid agree and bind themselves that, immediately after the ratification of this treaty, they will remove to said reservation and remain thereon, unless temporary leave of absence be granted to them by the superintendent or agent having charge of the tribes.
"It is further stipulated and agreed that no white person shall be permitted to locate or remain upon the reservation, except the Indian superintendent and agent, employes of the Indian department, and officers of the army of the United States . . . [and] that in case persons other than those specified are found upon the reservation, they shall be immediately expelled therefrom; and the exclusive right of taking fish in the streams and lakes, included in said reservation, and of gathering edible roots, seeds, and berries within its limits, is hereby secured to the Indians aforesaid. . . ." 16 Stat. 708.
The language of the 1901 Agreement must be read with these terms of the 1864 Treaty in mind. In 1954 when Congress terminated the Klamath Reservation, it enacted an express provision continuing the Indians' right to fish on the former reservation land. 25 U.S.C. § 564m(b); see Kimball v. Callahan, 590 F.2d 768 (CA9), cert. denied, 444 U.S. 826, 100 S.Ct. 49, 62 L.Ed.2d 33 (1979). The 1901 Agreement contained no such express provision concerning the right to hunt and fish on the lands ceded by the Tribe. Instead, the 1901 Agreement contained a broad and unequivocal conveyance of the Tribe's title to the land and a surrender of "all their claim, right, title, and interest in and to " that portion of the reservation. 34 Stat. 367 (emphasis added).19 The 1901 Agreement thus was both a divestiture of the Tribe's ownership of the ceded lands and a diminution of the boundaries of the reservation within which the Tribe exercised its sovereignty. In the absence of any language reserving any specific rights in the ceded lands, the normal construction of the words used in the 1901 Agreement unquestionably would encompass any special right to use the ceded lands for hunting and fishing.
This conclusion is unequivocally confirmed by the fact that the rights secured by the 1864 Treaty were "exclusive." Since the 1901 Cession Agreement concededly diminished the reservation boundaries, any tribal right to hunt and fish on the ceded, off-reservation lands can no longer be "exclusive" as specified in the 1864 Treaty. Indeed, even if the Tribe had expressly reserved a "privilege of fishing and hunting" on the ceded lands, our precedents demonstrate that such an express reservation would not suffice to defeat the State's power to reasonably and evenhandedly regulate such activity. See n. 16, supra. In light of these precedents, the absence of any express reservation of rights, as found in other 19th-century agreements, only serves to strengthen the conclusion that no special off-reservation rights were comprehended by the parties to the 1901 Agreement.20
As both the District Court and the Court of Appeals noted, Article IV of the 1901 Agreement preserved all of the Klamath Indians' "benefits to which they are entitled under existing treaties, not inconsistent with the provisions of this agreement." Article IV thus made it clear that none of the benefits that the Tribe had preserved within its reservation in the 1864 Treaty would be lost. But because the right to hunt and fish reserved in the 1864 Treaty was an exclusive right to be exercised within the reservation, that right could not consistently survive off the reservation under the clear provisions of cession and diminution contained in Article I. Moreover, a glaring inconsistency in the overall Treaty structure would have been present if the Tribe simultaneously could have exercised an independent right to hunt and fish on the ceded lands outside the boundaries of the diminished reservation while remaining bound to honor its 1864 Treaty commitment to stay within the reservation absent permission. Article IV cannot fairly be construed as an implicit preservation of benefits previously linked to the reservation when those benefits could be enjoyed thereafter only outside the reservation boundaries.21
Second, Congress in 1901 was motivated by additional goals. By 1896, non-Indian settlers had moved onto the disputed reservation lands, the State of Oregon had completed a military road across the reservation, and conflicts between members of the Tribe and non-Indians perceived as interlopers were sufficient to require congressional attention. See S.Doc. No. 129, 53d Cong., 2d Sess. (1894); n. 8, supra. Negotiations with the Tribe were authorized in order to settle these conflicts as well as to honor fairly the terms of the 1864 Treaty. These goals again suggest two equally consistent options: restoration of the correct reservation boundaries and exclusion of non-Indians as the 1864 Treaty required, or purchase of the excluded, entered-upon lands. Rather than restore the excluded lands to the Tribe—an option that would have left intact the Tribe's exclusive right to hunt and fish on those lands Congress chose to remove the excluded lands from the reservation, leaving them open for non-Indian use,22 and to compensate the Indians for the taking.
The historical record of the lengthy negotiations between the Tribe and the United States provides no reason to reject the presumption that the 1901 Agreement fairly describes the entire understanding between the parties. The Tribe was represented by counsel, the tribal negotiating committee members spoke and understood English, and the Tribe secured a number of alterations to the United States' original proposals. H.R.Doc. No. 156, 56th Cong., 2d Sess., 29-30 (1900). Although members of the Tribe had stressed the importance of hunting and fishing on the excluded lands in order to establish their claim to title with the Boundary Commission in 1896, there is no record of even a reference to a right to continue those activities on those lands in the course of negotiating for the cession of the land and all rights "in and to" it. The failure to mention these rights in the face of this language, as well as the specific terms of the 1864 Treaty that would appear to render their continued exercise inconsistent with diminution, strongly supports the conclusion that there existed no contemporary intention specially to preserve those rights.23
Moreover, the Tribe has since been afforded an opportunity to recover additional compensation for the ceded lands, in light of the "unconscionable" amount paid in 1906. 20 Ind. Cl.Comm'n, at 530. Yet in that proceeding, which resulted in an award to the Tribe of over $4 million, id., at 543, the Tribe apparently agreed that the "highest and best uses" for the ceded lands were commercial lumbering and livestock grazing, again without mention of any hunting or fishing rights.24 The absence of specific compensation for the rights at issue is entirely consistent with our interpretation of the 1901 Agreement.
The Court today holds that the Klamath Tribe has no special right to hunt and fish on certain lands although it has done so undisturbed from time immemorial. Instead, the Tribe is determined to be subject to state regulation to the same extent as any other person in the State of Oregon. This Court has in the past recognized that Indian hunting and fishing rights—even if nonexclusive, and even if existing apart from reservation lands are valuable property rights, not fully subject to state regulation and not to be deemed abrogated without explicit indication.1 Although all agree that hunting and fishing have historically been vital to the continued prosperity of the Klamath, the Court today assumes that the Klamath Tribe silently gave up its rights to hunt and fish on these lands in a 1901 Agreement, approved by Congress in 1906, that had no purpose other than to benefit the Tribe for a previous injustice. It reaches this conclusion even though there is no historical evidence that any party to the Agreement envisioned it as having the effect of altering tribal hunting and fishing practices, and even though hunting and fishing practices did not in fact change as a result of the Agreement. Although I agree that the boilerplate language of the Agreement can be read as the Court does, I also believe that such a reading is not necessary, ignores the Agreement's historical context, and is not faithful to the well-established principles that Indian treaties are to be interpreted as they were likely understood by the tribe and that doubts concerning the meaning of a treaty should be resolved in favor of the tribe.2 Accordingly, I dissent.
* I will only briefly summarize the relevant history of the Klamath Reservation. As the Court explains, in 1864 the Klamath Tribe entered into a treaty with the United States whereby it agreed to settle on a reservation of 1.9 million acres in south central Oregon. Treaty of Oct. 14, 1864, 16 Stat. 707. This land was a small part of the 22 million acres of land to which the Klamath had held aboriginal title. As the Court points out: "The 1864 Treaty also provided that the [Klamath Tribe] would have . . . 'the exclusive right of taking fish in the streams and lakes, included in said reservation, and of gathering edible roots, seeds, and berries within its limits.' " Ante, at 755. Although the borders of the reservation soon became the subject of some dispute, the purposes of the Treaty have always been clear. These purposes, and the importance of Indian hunting and fishing rights to their accomplishment, were well stated in a report to Congress by a Commission appointed to study the later boundary dispute:
The Boundary Commission went to the reservation and interviewed large numbers of Klamath. Tribal elders all insisted that they were sure that the disputed land was supposed to be in the reservation. They had explicitly demanded the land's inclusion in the 1864 Treaty, they explained, because of the land's traditional importance in the Tribe's essential hunting, fishing, and gathering activities. The Commissioners inspected the land and found a tribal fishing site upon which a stone dam had been constructed and maintained by the Tribe to aid in gathering large numbers of fish. The Commission concluded that the Klamath's complaints were largely justified and deserving of redress.3
The Commission determined, pursuant to the Tribe's desires, that redress would take the form of officially ceding the excluded land back to the United States for compensation, leaving the border of the reservation where it had been erroneously set. As the Court notes, however, the Commission determined the value of the excluded land with no reference to its use for hunting, fishing, or gathering—basing valuation on its use for timber and stock grazing. Yet the Commission knew the land's importance to the Tribe for hunting and fishing, since this was the basis of the Commission's finding that it had been erroneously excluded from the reservation. Similarly, during the course of the two years of negotiations toward an agreement, there was no reference to any cessation of hunting, fishing, or gathering activity on the land in question, nor, it is true, to the continuing of such activity. The issue was simply never mentioned, and there is certainly no specific evidence that anyone, whether Klamath or Government official, envisioned that the Agreement would compel the Tribe to in any way alter the important hunting and fishing activities that it had been engaged in since the initial establishment of the reservation. During that time the Tribe had been forced to accept that others were entering and using the land, but the Tribe also had continued to fish and hunt as it always had done.
As the Court notes, the case focuses on two provisions of the 1901 Agreement. Article I of the Agreement contained a broad cession by the Tribe of "all their claim, right, title, and interest in and to" the excluded land. 34 Stat. 367. In contrast, Article IV of the Agreement broadly declared that "nothing in [the] agreement shall be construed to deprive the said Klamath . . . of any benefits to which they are entitled under existing treaties, not inconsistent with the provisions of this agreement." Respondents and the courts below argued that the language of Article IV can reasonably be interpreted as a reservation by the Indians of a nonexclusive right to hunt and fish on those parts of the ceded land not in private hands.4
This overly formal approach to treaty interpretation ignores the fundamental presumptions that Indian treaties are to be construed as the tribes would have understood them, Choctaw Nation v. Oklahoma, 397 U.S. 620, 631, 90 S.Ct. 1328, 1334, 25 L.Ed.2d 615 (1970), and that ambiguities should be resolved in favor of the tribe. Washington v. Washington Commercial Passenger Fishing Vessel Assn., 443 U.S. 658, 675-676, 99 S.Ct. 3055, 3069, 61 L.Ed.2d 823 (1979). I would have thought that an inquiry into the 1901 Agreement's meaning would focus, not primarily on the formal structure of the 1864 Treaty—leaving both documents abstracted from their actual purposes and historical contexts—but instead on the problems that arose since 1864 that gave rise to the need for the 1901 Agreement. Certainly, the latter approach is better suited to the goal of determining the purposes of the parties, and especially, to the goal of determining the understandings of the Tribe.
The Tribe's perspective is not difficult to divine. At the time of the 1901 Agreement, as well as at the time of the 1906 Act of Congress which ratified this Agreement, "[h]unting, fishing, gathering and trapping [were] crucial to the survival of the Klamath Indians." App. 19 (stipulated facts). The Tribe had received, under the 1864 Treaty, the right to hunt and fish on the specific lands that were ceded in the 1901 Agreement, and had received that right because it had insisted on the particular importance to the Tribe of its ability to hunting and fishing on those specific lands. Although these lands had not been included within the erroneous borders of the original reservation, the Tribe nevertheless entered them to hunt and fish.
The United States' purposes were similarly clear, as the 1901 Agreement was entirely a result of Indian demands for the redress of an unfortunate mistake. The United States fully understood that the land in question was ill-suited for agriculture and settlement, and the record reflects no other collateral purposes of Congress. Indeed, there is no evidence of any pressures on Congress from non-Indians urging the cession at issue.5 There is simply no reason to believe that the United States—acting as trustee and seeking to compensate the Tribe for an unjust and accidental diminishment of their reservation intended silently to effectuate a further diminution of tribal rights. We should not lightly assume that Congress, acting as a trustee of the Tribe's interests, wished to deprive the Tribe of access to food supplies that it might need and had always utilized.
It is likely that the United States' interests in 1901 had little to do with preserving the formal structure of the 1864 Treaty, an interest that the Court today assumes. Although the 1864 Treaty required the Tribe to stay on the land reserved to it by the Treaty, the alternative in 1864 was the Tribe's continued presence on over 22 million acres of land to which it held aboriginal title. The land on which the Tribe was to stay, although poor land for settlement, was known to contain game, fish, and vegetation in such quantities as to allow the Tribe to be self-sufficient with no reason to wander. By 1901, there was no longer an issue as to whether the Tribe would ever again wander over the 22 million acres they had once held under aboriginal title—the Klamath had fully accepted that they would remain on a much smaller area. But the issue of retaining the Tribe's self-sufficiency was still a concern.
This interpretation of the parties' perspectives fully conforms to what we know of the parties' subsequent behavior.6 Congress never opened the ceded lands to settlement, and in fact, by the time it had ratified the 1901 Agreement, "[v]irtually all the land ceded by the Tribe was . . . closed to entry and placed in either national forests or parks." App. 13-14 (stipulated facts). No argument has been made that continued hunting and fishing by the Indians is incompatible with the land's uses. The Tribe's behavior is also fully consistent with its current interpretation of the Agreement. The parties have stipulated that the Tribe has in fact "continued to hunt, fish and trap on the excluded lands from the time of their cession to the present," id., at 14 (stipulated facts). Thus, no subsequent behavior of the United States or of the Tribe reflects an expectation that the Tribe would alter its hunting and fishing patterns as a result of the cession.
Last, the 1901 Agreement's treatment of the issue of compensation also provides evidence that the parties did not envision that the Agreement denied the Klamath continued access to these traditional hunting and fishing grounds. The parties have stipulated that the Commission in no way considered the land's value for hunting or fishing when it calculated the proper compensation to the Tribe. Id., at 12. Yet, the Commission was well aware that the land was a hunting and fishing ground of some importance to the Tribe. Similarly, when the Indian Claims Commission reviewed and supplemented the compensation awarded the Klamath—more than six decades after the ratification of the Agreement—it never assigned any value to hunting and fishing rights. Id., at 14; see also Klamath and Modoc Tribes v. United States, 20 Ind.Cl.Comm'n 522 (1969). The silence of both these bodies is not surprising, if one accepts that the cession did not envision that Indian hunting and fishing would cease. We do not normally assume that the United States, without providing compensation, intended to deprive a tribe of valued hunting and fishing rights. Menominee Tribe of Indians v. United States, 391 U.S. 404, 413, 88 S.Ct. 1705, 1711, 20 L.Ed.2d 697 (1968) (will not lightly assume that Congress meant to abrogate hunting and fishing rights without provision of compensation); cf. United States v. Sioux Nation of Indians, 448 U.S. 371, 422-424, 100 S.Ct. 2716, 2744-2745, 65 L.Ed.2d 844 (1980) (will not assume that compensation designed to ensure Tribe's survival after it gave up traditional hunting activities was intended to cover both the taking of hunting rights and the taking of land). Nor should we lightly assume that the Tribe silently accepted the lack of specific compensation because its members understood that their valued hunting and fishing rights were merely incidental to land ownership.7
The analysis of the Agreement offered here is fully consistent with this Court's prior cases regarding Indian hunting and fishing rights. We have accepted that nonexclusive hunting and fishing rights have often existed independent from rights of exclusive possession of land. Thus, there have been many treaties in which Indians have explicitly reserved nonexclusive hunting and fishing rights while ceding the corresponding lands. See nn. 1 and 4, supra. Similarly, Congress has explicitly reserved to a Tribe continued hunting and fishing rights even after a reservation has been fully terminated. See, e.g., 25 U.S.C. § 564m(b) (fishing rights explicitly reserved upon termination of Klamath Reservation in 1954); see also Kimball v. Callahan, 590 F.2d 768, 772 (CA 9), cert. denied, 444 U.S. 826, 100 S.Ct. 49, 62 L.Ed.2d 33 (1979). But most importantly, this Court has held that hunting and fishing rights can by implication survive the full termination of a reservation, even where the enactment terminating the reservation is written in broad language and makes no reference to those rights' survival. Menominee Tribe of Indians v. United States, supra.
In this case, as a result of the erroneous survey there was a de facto separation of the Klamath's hunting and fishing rights from their rights of exclusive possession of the land. The former rights existed to the extent they could, consistent with the loss of the latter rights. In essence, the Tribe was left with off-reservation rights to hunt and fish on land from which it could not exclude others. The 1901 Agreement, which preserved to the Klamath all "benefits to which they are entitled under existing treaties, not inconsistent with the provisions of the [cession]," was not meant to take from them what was left of their right of access to their traditional hunting and fishing grounds.
"The Indians particularly told Mr. Huntington of this great need of these two valleys for this purpose, and they were dependent upon them principally for their living. All the headmen and leaders among the Indians saying this—and Mr. Huntington said 'I will,'—you shall have them in the treaty." Id., at 15-16.
The Tribe suggests that, because Congress closed virtually all the ceded lands to entry by 1906, this case is to be distinguished from others in which a congressional purpose to open Indian lands to non-Indian settlement might "reveal a clear Congressional intent" to terminate off-reservation Indian rights. Brief for Respondent 33, n. 15; see Solem v. Bartlett, 465 U.S., at 471, 104 S.Ct., at 1166. Of course, in our diminishment cases like Solem, the question has been whether diminishment has occurred—limitation of tribal rights outside a diminished reservation has been presumed. See, e.g., id., at 467, 104 S.Ct., at 1164; Rosebud Sioux Tribe v. Kneip, 430 U.S. 584, 630-632, 97 S.Ct. 1361, 1385-1386, 51 L.Ed.2d 660 (1977) (MARSHALL, J., dissenting); Mattz v. Arnett, 412 U.S. 481, 483, n. 1, 93 S.Ct. 2245, 2247, n. 1, 37 L.Ed.2d 92 (1973). In this case diminution is acknowledged, and the Tribe poses the entirely different question whether special rights nevertheless survived. Moreover, virtually all of the congressional withdrawal of the ceded lands involved in this case occurred after the 1901 Agreement was negotiated and signed. App. 13-14.
Additionally, the 1901 Agreement cannot really be characterized as "silent" with regard to the preservation of off-reservation rights—it expressly stated that the Tribe ceded all its rights in and to the land. Viewed in the entirety of its particular historical context, silence concerning specific rights in the 1901 Agreement is consistent only with an intent to end any special rights of the Tribe outside the reservation. Cf. Ward v. Race Horse, 163 U.S. 504, 16 S.Ct. 1076, 41 L.Ed. 244 (1896).