Opinion ID: 759493
Heading Depth: 4
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Claims based on the 1831 Treaty

Text: 34 The Menominee argue that the 1831 Treaty reserved their right to fish and hunt on lands ceded to the east side of the Fox River and their right to hunt on lands west of the river. The Tribe contends that the subsequent treaties did not expressly abrogate these usufructuary rights and, therefore, the Menominee retain the right to exercise these rights free from state regulation. The district court concluded that the 1848 Treaty extinguished any usufructuary rights the 1831 Treaty reserved. We agree because in the 1848 Treaty the Menominee Tribe ceded all of its rights to all of its Wisconsin land. 1848 Treaty Art. II (The said Menomonee [sic] tribe of Indians agree to cede, and do hereby cede, sell, and relinquish to the United States all their land in the State of Wisconsin wherever situated.). 35 The 1848 Treaty forecloses any claim of usufructuary rights reserved in the 1831 Treaty. In the Treaty of 1848, the Menominee Tribe unambiguously ceded all of its Wisconsin land to the United States in exchange for land located in Minnesota, and agreed to move to the new territory within two years unless the President gave the Tribe permission to remain on the ceded land. 1848 Treaty Art. II. Clearly, by the terms of the 1848 Treaty, the Menominee relinquished title to their Wisconsin land. As the district court noted, the Menominee could not reasonably have expected to continue hunting and fishing on the land ceded in 1848, considering the Tribe had just agreed to leave the Wisconsin land and move to the Minnesota reservation approximately 300 miles away. 36 The Tribe attempts to avoid this conclusion by arguing that the 1848 Treaty was obtained through fraud and that the tribal signatories believed that the land cession was contingent on the aforementioned Treaty-promised exploratory trip to the Minnesota reservation. However, assuming that in 1848 the tribal signatories did not believe the Treaty was binding, by 1850, when the Tribe requested the President's permission to extend the removal period, the Menominee certainly understood the terms of the 1848 Treaty: if in 1850 the Tribe did not believe that the 1848 Treaty was binding, why did the Tribe seek the president's permission to remain on land in Wisconsin; if the Treaty was non-binding such permission would obviously have been unnecessary. 37 Moreover, although the Preamble to the 1854 Treaty suggests that the Tribe felt cheated by the 1848 Treaty, the remedy contained in the 1854 Treaty was not a repudiation or rescission of the 1848 Treaty. Rather, the 1854 Treaty unambiguously confirmed the terms of the 1848 Treaty. 1854 Treaty Preamble p 1 (describing Treaty of 1854 as supplementary to the Treaty of 1848). By its terms, the 1854 Treaty regarded the Minnesota reservation as belonging to the Menominee and, in order to accommodate the desire of the Menominee to remain in Wisconsin, provided that the Minnesota reservation would be exchanged for a Wisconsin reservation located on the Wolf River. The 1854 Treaty thereby reinforced the terms of the 1848 Treaty. 38 The Tribe maintains that its refusal to remove to Minnesota demonstrates its belief that the 1848 Treaty was not binding. The Supreme Court, however, rejected a similar argument in New York Indians v. United States, 170 U.S. 1, 18 S.Ct. 531, 42 L.Ed. 927 (1898): 39 While it might be reasonably contended that their failure to remove should result in a cancellation of the treaty, and a restoration to them of their rights in the Wisconsin lands, that construction is precluded by the language of the [treaty], which contains a present and irrevocable grant of the Wisconsin lands, and puts it beyond their power to revoke the bargain. 40 Id. at 19, 18 S.Ct. 531 (construing a treaty exchanging Wisconsin land for land in Kansas which the New York tribes never occupied). The 1848 Treaty at issue in this case also contained a present and irrevocable grant of the Wisconsin lands; the Tribe's refusal to move to Minnesota does not affect that grant in any way. See also Sokaogon Chippewa Community v. Exxon Corp., 2 F.3d 219, 222 (7th Cir.1993) (continued occupancy of ceded lands by Indians is irrelevant to issue of whether Indians retain any occupancy rights in those ceded lands). 41 The Tribe does not challenge the fairness of the 1854 Treaty. Instead it argues that neither the 1848 Treaty nor the 1854 Treaty explicitly abrogates the usufructuary rights allegedly reserved in the 1831 Treaty. Therefore, it contends that the usufructuary rights reserved in Article Sixth of the 1831 Treaty continue unabated. But the Tribe relinquished all its usufructuary rights in the 1848 Treaty; thus it is irrelevant that the 1854 treaty did not explicitly abrogate those rights. However, for the sake of completeness, we address the Tribe's other arguments. The usufructuary rights on the east side of the Fox River and those on the west side of the river were reserved subject to different conditions. Therefore, we analyze the Tribe's contentions separately as to each set of rights. 42 The usufructuary rights on the east side of the Fox River were reserved as follows: 43 The Menomonee [sic] tribe of Indians shall be at liberty to hunt and fish on the lands they have now ceded to the United States, on the east side of [the] Fox river [sic] and Green bay [sic], with the same privileges they at present enjoy, until it be surveyed and offered for sale by the President; they conduct themselves peaceably and orderly. 44 1831 Treaty Art. Sixth p 1. Clearly, the usufructuary rights were conditional. Compare Ward v. Race Horse, 163 U.S. 504, 509-10, 16 S.Ct. 1076, 41 L.Ed. 244 (1896) (discussing abrogation of conditional usufructuary rights). The Menominee were free to use the land as long as they conducted themselves peaceably and orderly, but only until the President had the land surveyed and offered for sale. It is undisputed that the land was surveyed and offered for sale shortly thereafter in 1834. Therefore, according to the terms of the treaty, the usufructuary rights on the east side of the Fox were extinguished long before the Tribe and the United States entered into the 1848 Treaty. Because the right to hunt and fish on these lands was extinguished in 1834 through satisfaction of the conditional term (namely, the land was surveyed and offered for sale), it was unnecessary to explicitly abrogate the right to use lands east of the Fox in the 1848 Treaty, and even less reason to mention that right in the 1854 Treaty. See Klamath, 473 U.S. at 773, 105 S.Ct. 3420 (later treaty's silence as to usufructuary rights is irrelevant when earlier treaties did not reserve such rights); Mille Lacs, 124 F.3d at 925 (distinguishing cases in which earlier treaties did not secure off-reservation usufructuary rights and those in which they did when analyzing the effect of a subsequent treaty's silence on the issue). 45 The Tribe argues that the terms of the 1831 Treaty are ambiguous, and that the treaty could be understood to mean that the Menominee had the right to use whatever part of the lands east of the river that were unsold so long as they behaved peaceably and orderly. The language in the 1831 Treaty simply does not support such an interpretation: it does not distinguish between land actually sold and land offered for sale. Moreover, the government's express purpose for entering into the 1831 Treaty was to encourage the Menominee to become farmers and to use the land east of the Fox River for settlers. Allowing the Tribe to hunt on the lands that were not actually sold certainly would not have served the government's goals of discouraging the Tribe's pursuit of hunting and gathering food and encouraging settlement. Given this historical context, we will not ignore the plain meaning of the 1831 Treaty. See Klamath, 473 U.S. at 774, 105 S.Ct. 3420 ([C]ourts cannot ignore plain language [in treaties] that, viewed in historical context and given a fair appraisal, clearly runs counter to a tribe's later claims.). 46 As to the land west of the Fox River, the 1831 Treaty provided the following: 47 [The remaining land] the Menomonees [sic] claim as their country; that part of it adjoining the farming country, 4 on the west side of the Fox river [sic], will remain to them as heretofore, for a hunting ground, until the President of the United States, shall deem it expedient to extinguish their title. In that case, the Menomonee [sic] tribe promise to surrender it immediately, upon being notified of the desire of Government to possess it. The additional annuity then to be paid to the Menomonee [sic] tribe, to be fixed by the President. 48 1831 Treaty Art. Sixth p 2. Although in general usufructuary rights are not dependant on having title to the land, see, e.g., Sokaogon Chippewa Community, 2 F.3d at 223, here the 1831 Treaty explicitly links the right to hunt on the land to having title to the land: the Treaty states that the Tribe's right to hunt on the land remained until the President extinguished their title to the land. The Treaties of 1836 and 1848, in which the Menominee ceded title to those lands, thus extinguished their right to use the land for hunting. Again, it was unnecessary to mention the usufructuary rights in the 1854 Treaty. 49 The Tribe attempts to analogize the 1831 Treaty condition, until the President ... shall deem it expedient, to the treaty language at issue in Lac Courte Oreilles Band of Lake Superior Chippewa Indians v. Voigt, 700 F.2d 341 (7th Cir.1983), in order to support its assertion of continuing usufructuary rights on the west side of the Fox River. In Lac Courte Oreilles, this court analyzed a treaty reserving usufructuary rights during the pleasure of the President. Id. at 345. We held that this language did not give the President unlimited power to revoke the right to use the land. Rather, we opined that the Indians reasonably understood the treaty to mean that they could use the land so long as their coexistence with the white settlers was peaceful. Id. at 356-57. In other words, we interpreted the treaty to mean that the President would be pleased as long as the Indians lived peacefully with the settlers, and that the Indians thus had the right to use the land for as long as they remained peaceful. 50 Our holding in Lac Courte Oreilles is not relevant to the question presented here. In Lac Courte Oreilles, the determinative issue was how to interpret the phrase the pleasure of the President. In this case we are not set the task of analyzing the meaning of until the President of the United States shall deem it expedient. Instead, the question is whether the terms of the treaty inextricably joined the Tribe's usufructuary rights to the Tribe's title to the land, and thus whether those usufructuary rights were extinguished when the Tribe ceded its title to the land. For purposes of this analysis, the Tribe's understanding of expedient is irrelevant. 51 The Menominee also assert that they ceded the land west of the Fox under the assumption that title to the land would revert to their possession if the New York tribes chose not to settle there. But the treaty explicitly states that if the New York tribes did not relocate to Wisconsin, such portion [of land] as would have belonged to said [New York] Indians shall revert to the United States. That portion, if any, so reverting, to be laid off by the President. 1831 Treaty Art. First. The Tribe's alleged expectation that they would keep the land if the New York tribes did not take it runs counter to the express language of the treaty. We will not interpret a treaty to mean the opposite of what it says. See Klamath, 473 U.S. at 774, 105 S.Ct. 3420 ([C]ourts cannot ignore plain [treaty] language that ... clearly runs counter to a tribe's later claims.). We disagree and hold that the Tribe's claim on this issue is based on a foundation of legal quicksand. 52 We conclude that the Tribe can prove no set of facts which would entitle them to exercise usufructuary activities on lands off of the reservation under the 1831 Treaty. Thus, the district court correctly dismissed the Menominee's claims to continuing offreservation, treaty-reserved usufructuary rights. 53