Opinion ID: 3048734
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: The Yakama Treaty of 1855

Text: The text of a treaty must be construed as the Indians would naturally have understood it at the time of the treaty, with doubtful or ambiguous expressions resolved in the Indians’ favor. See Minnesota v. Mille Lacs Band of Chippewa Indians, 526 U.S. 172, 196, 200 (1999) (“Mille Lacs Band”); see also Tulee v. Washington, 315 U.S. 681, 684-85 (1942) (“It 5846 UNITED STATES v. SMISKIN is our responsibility to see that the terms of the treaty are carried out, so far as possible, in accordance with the meaning they were understood to have by the tribal representatives at the council and in a spirit which generously recognizes the full obligation of this nation to protect [tribal] interests . . . .”). The Supreme Court has repeatedly applied this rule of treaty construction in construing Article III of the Yakama Treaty. See Washington v. Wash. State Commercial Passenger Fishing Vessel Ass’n, 443 U.S. 658, 676 (1979) (“This rule, in fact, has thrice been explicitly relied on by the Court in broadly interpreting these very treaties in the Indians’ favor.”). We have also applied this rule of construction in interpreting the Yakama Treaty, and the Right to Travel provision in particular. See Cree II, 157 F.3d at 769. [4] As the starting point in its analysis, the district court thus properly turned to Cree II, where we addressed at length the Right to Travel provision of the Yakama Treaty.7 In Cree II, the State of Washington had issued citations to truck drivers for logging companies owned by Yakama tribal members, because the companies had not paid the license and permit fees that the State imposed on trucks used to transport lumber to sale. See id. at 765. We held that applying the fees to the tribal members violated the Yakama Treaty’s Right to Travel provision because the provision guarantees them the “right to transport goods to market over public highways without payment of fees for that use.” Id. at 769. The Government suggests that we limit Cree II to its holding that the Yakamas’ right to travel precludes the State of Washington from imposing fees that impinge on this right. Because the state pre-notification requirement at issue here does not impose any fee, the Government argues that Cree II 7 In Cree II, we affirmed the district court’s judgment in Yakama Indian Nation v. Flores, 955 F. Supp. 1229 (E.D. Wash. 1997), following our remand in Cree v. Waterbury, 78 F.3d 1400 (9th Cir. 1996) (“Cree I”). UNITED STATES v. SMISKIN 5847 does not apply and that the requirement does not violate the Yakama Treaty. We decline to draw such a distinction. In Cree II, we expressly relied on the extensive factual findings made by the district court in that case — the Yakama Indian Nation district court. As we noted: The district court eloquently set forth its findings that travel was of great importance to the Yakamas, that they enjoyed free access to travel routes for trade and other purposes at Treaty time, and that they understood the Treaty to grant them valuable rights that would permit them to continue in their ways. We agree with the district court that, in light of those and its other findings, the Treaty clause must be interpreted to guarantee the Yakamas the right to transport goods to market over public highways without payment of fees for that use. Id. at 769. Indeed, the Yakama Indian Nation district court conducted a “careful inquiry into the intentions of the parties” at the time of the Treaty, and considered extensive testimony from three experts and hundreds of exhibits. See id. at 774. Further, in light of the detailed factual findings in Yakama Indian Nation, we have little difficulty in concluding that the Yakamas’ treaty right extends to the case at hand. In Yakama Indian Nation, the district court determined that the Yakama Treaty, and the Right to Travel provision in particular, were of tremendous importance to the Yakama Nation when the Treaty was signed. See 955 F. Supp. at 1238. At that time, the Yakamas exercised free and open access to transport goods as a central part of a trading network running from the Western Coastal tribes to the Eastern Plains tribes. See id. Agents for the United States thus repeatedly emphasized in negotiations that tribal members would retain the “same liberties . . . to go on the roads to market.” Id. at 1244, 1247. Indeed, although the United States “negotiated with the Northwest tribes many 5848 UNITED STATES v. SMISKIN treaties containing parallel provisions,” a “public highways clause” promising a right to travel is found in only one other treaty. Cree II, 157 F.3d at 772. [5] The United States also promised the Yakamas that they could rely on “all [the Treaty’s] provisions being carried out strictly,” id. at 767, and the Yakamas forever ceded about 10 million acres, or 90 percent of their land, in exchange for these rights. See Yakama Indian Nation, 955 F. Supp. at 1248, 1254; County of Yakima v. Confederated Tribes and Bands of the Yakima Indian Nation, 502 U.S. 251, 256 (1992). The Yakama Nation thus understandably assigned a special significance to each part of the Treaty at the time of signing and continues to view the Treaty as a sacred document today. See Yakama Indian Nation, 955 F. Supp. at 1262. [6] Based on these findings, the Yakama Indian Nation district court concluded that the Yakamas understood the Treaty at the time of signing to “unambiguously reserve[ ] to [them] the right to travel the public highways without restriction for purposes of hauling goods to market.” Id. at 1248 (emphasis added). The court further determined that “both parties to the treaty expressly intended that the Yakamas would retain their right to travel outside reservation boundaries, with no conditions attached.” Id. at 1251 (emphasis added). Finally, it found that “the Treaty was clearly intended to reserve the Yakamas’ right to travel on the public highways to engage in future trading endeavors.” Id. at 1253 (emphasis in original). [7] In light of these findings, which we did not disturb in Cree II, the district court in the instant case properly concluded that the pre-notification requirement is a “restriction” and “condition” on the right to travel that violates the Yakama Treaty. Tribal members were not required to notify anyone prior to transporting goods to market at the time of the treaty,8 8 As the Yakama Nation argues in its Amicus Brief, the Government “may not wishfully insist that the Yakamas should have understood in 1855 that federal agents would arrest and imprison tribal members who travel with untaxed tobacco without first notifying the territorial government.” UNITED STATES v. SMISKIN 5849 and the Treaty guaranteed to them the same rights today. We agree with the district court that there is no basis in either the language of the Treaty or our cases interpreting it for distinguishing restrictions that impose a fee from those, as here, that impose some other requirement. Applying either type of requirement to the Yakamas imposes a condition on travel that violates their treaty right to transport goods to market without restriction.9 Thus, just as the State cannot issue citations to tribal members for not paying fees before they bring lumber to market, the federal government cannot impose criminal sanctions on tribal members for not providing notice to the State before transporting tobacco for sale or trade. Similarly, we refuse to draw what would amount to an arbitrary line between travel and trade in this context, holding, as the Government suggests, that the Yakama Treaty does not protect the “commerce” at issue in the Smiskins’ case. We have already established that the Right to Travel provision “guarantee[s] the Yakamas the right to transport goods to market” for “trade and other purposes.” Cree II, 157 F.3d at 769 (emphases added). Thus, whether the goods at issue are timber or tobacco products,10 the right to travel overlaps with the right to trade under the Yakama Treaty such that excluding commercial exchanges from its purview would effectively abrogate our decision in Cree II and render the Right to Travel provision truly impotent. See Puyallup Tribe v. Dep’t of Game of Wash., 391 U.S. 392, 397 (1968) (“To construe the treaty as giving the Indians no rights but such as they would have without the treaty would be an impotent outcome 9 Indeed, were we to agree with the Government, Yakama tribal members who transport cigarettes without providing notice to the State would face felony charges under the CCTA and up to five years in prison and $250,000 in fines. See 18 U.S.C. §§ 2344(a), 3571(3). As a practical matter, we fail to see how this criminal penalty would impede less on the Yakamas’ right to travel than the minimal fines at issue in Cree II. 10 As the Yakama Nation notes in its Amicus Brief, eyewitness accounts confirm that tobacco had been a significant medium of trade for the Yakamas for over fifty years when the Treaty was signed in 1855. 5850 UNITED STATES v. SMISKIN to negotiations and a convention which seemed to promise more, and give the word of the Nation for more.” (citations omitted) (internal quotation marks omitted)). Neither do we find our decision in Baker determinative. In Baker, we held that the CCTA validly applied to members of the Puyallup Indian Tribe notwithstanding a “right to trade” allegedly promised the Tribe in the Medicine Creek Treaty. See 63 F.3d at 1485. Similar to the present case, the Puyallup tribal members had trafficked in unstamped cigarettes without obtaining prior approval from the State of Washington, in violation of Washington Administrative Code section 458-20192. The cigarettes were therefore unauthorized under state law and contraband under the CCTA. The Supreme Court’s jurisprudence makes clear, however, that we must interpret a treaty right in light of the particular tribe’s understanding of that right at the time the treaty was made,11 and Baker addressed a different tribe, a different treaty, and a different right. Indeed, the relevant portion of the Medicine Creek Treaty involved in Baker did not expressly grant any right to the Puyallup Tribe, providing only that, “[t]he said tribes and bands finally agree not to trade at Vancouver’s Island, or elsewhere out of the dominions of the United States.” Id. Thus, the defendant tribal members could only argue that, by including such a restriction, the Treaty intended no other restrictions on Indian trade. See id. This ambiguous treaty language stands in stark contrast to the text of the Yakama Treaty, which expressly grants the “right to travel . . . upon all public highways,” and our interpretation of the Treaty in Cree II.12 Further, although we held in Baker 11 See, e.g., Mille Lacs Band, 526 U.S. at 201-02 (noting that similar language in two treaties may have different meanings because the Court examines “the historical record and . . . the context of the treaty negotiations to discern what the parties intended by their choice of words”); Fishing Vessel, 443 U.S. at 675 (“Accordingly, it is the intention of the parties . . . that must control any attempt to interpret the treaties.”). 12 For similar reasons, our decision in Farris is inapposite. There, we concluded that another provision of the Medicine Creek Treaty, promising UNITED STATES v. SMISKIN 5851 that the CCTA did not violate the Medicine Creek Treaty even “assuming the defendants are correct about the expectations of the signers,” we addressed only the “trading right” allegedly guaranteed by the Medicine Creek Treaty, not the very different “right to travel” promised by the Yakama Treaty. See 63 F.3d at 1485. Additionally, in Baker, we did not find the characteristics of the state requirement then at issue relevant to our holding. Instead, we simply held that the “CCTA is not an impermissible restriction on a trading right guaranteed by the [Medicine Creek] Treaty.” Id. This broad holding cannot apply with similar force to the Yakama Treaty. In light of Cree II, the CCTA would certainly be an impermissible restriction on the Yakamas’ right to travel if the Government could rely on it to enforce against tribal members a state fee on the transport of unstamped cigarettes. Consequently, because Baker did not draw a distinction between such a fee based requirement and other types of requirements, it sheds no light on the critical question we resolve here: whether the State of Washington’s pre-notification requirement is distinguishable from the fee based requirements at issue in Cree II, such that applying it to Yakama tribal members would not violate their treaty right to travel. [8] Finally, the Government argues that the Yakamas’ right to travel applies only to “tribal goods,” which it defines as goods that are either collectively owned or produced on the reservation by the Tribe. Hence, the Treaty would apply to the reservation produced timber at issue in Cree II, but not to the cigarettes at issue here, which the Government alleges are not “exclusive use” of reservation land, was not specific enough to preempt a federal gambling statute. See 624 F.2d at 893. The Yakama Treaty’s more detailed public highways clause, which sets forth a specific right to travel and has been the subject of extensive judicial interpretation, is sufficiently specific to preclude application of Washington’s pre-notification requirement through the CCTA. 5852 UNITED STATES v. SMISKIN tribally owned or produced. The Government makes two points in support of its position. First, it calls our attention to the occasional references to “tribal goods” in Yakama Indian Nation and Cree II. See Yakama Indian, 995 F. Supp. at 1249; Cree II, 157 F.3d at 768. However, we referred simply to “goods,” not “tribal goods,” in ultimately defining the Yakamas’ right to travel in Cree II. See 157 F.3d at 769; see also Yakama Indian Nation, 995 F. Supp. at 1248 (defining the Treaty right as protecting “goods”). Further, we held that the Yakama Treaty precluded the State from issuing citations to the plaintiff logging companies, which were privately owned by individual tribal members. See Cree II, 157 F.3d at 765. We also cited with approval Yakama Indian Nation’s ruling that the Treaty right to travel “can be exercised by its individual members,” id. at 774 (quoting Yakama Indian Nation, 955 F. Supp. at 1260) (emphasis added), which is in accord with the Supreme Court’s jurisprudence. See Puyallup Tribe, Inc. v. Dep’t of Game of Wash., 433 U.S. 165, 171 (1977) (stating that “individual defendants were members of the Tribe and therefore entitled to the benefits of the Treaty”). Thus, we conclude that the use of the term “tribal goods” in Yakama Indian Nation and Cree II meant only that the “goods” must be transported by “tribal” members. [9] Also in support of its position, the Government directs us to the district court’s finding in Yakama Indian Nation that “[t]rucks owned by individual Indians have never been exempt from [vehicle] license fees.” 955 F. Supp. at 1232-33 (emphasis added); see also Cree II, 157 F.3d at 765 (noting this finding). Although the court did not explain the relevance of this fact, the Government suggests that the State’s imposition of such fees on the property of individual Indians shows that the parties did not understand the Treaty to protect nontribal goods. However, it is well established that parties’ posttreaty actions are relevant only insofar as they reflect on the determinative issue, the parties’ intent at the time the treaty was signed. See Cree I, 78 F.3d at 1403; see also Yakama Indian Nation, 955 F. Supp. at 1254 (discussing Supreme UNITED STATES v. SMISKIN 5853 Court cases that “clearly hold that subsequent actions cannot rewrite or expand a treaty beyond its clear terms”). Here, there is evidence from the time of treaty suggesting that the Yakamas then understood the right to travel to extend beyond tribal goods. Specifically, given the Tribe’s centrally located position as part of an inter-tribal trading network, it is likely that the Yakamas transported not only their own goods but also goods produced by other tribes in the network.13 See Yakama Indian Nation, 955 F. Supp. at 1238. In sum, we disagree with the Government’s argument that the Yakamas’ treaty right to travel protects only collectively owned or reservation derived goods.