Opinion ID: 355551
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Identifiable Land in Place.

Text: 93 The years from 1875 through 1879 were years of extremely high water flow on the Missouri River; no other four year period equaled or exceeded the maximum discharge for those years. 41 Defendants' experts agreed that during this time the meander lobe was low, at times entirely under the surface of the moving river and extremely vulnerable. This is corroborated by Barrett, who in his 1867 survey described the eastern end of the meander lobe as a low sandy point. 94 Recognizing that identifiable land in place may in given circumstances have probative value in helping to distinguish between accretion and avulsion, that is, at least in the sense of determining whether intervening land has been completely eroded or not, little significance can be attached to its alleged absence under the evidence adduced in the present case. The defendants urge that absence of identifiable land in place provides the necessary inference of erosion of the original reservation land. However, the trial court's finding that in 1879 bar A was of recent origin and was not identifiable land in place does not afford a permissible inference that the original reservation land had been eroded since, as the trial court itself pointed out, at least part of bar A was located within the area of the old abandoned channel. No land could be eroded if it never existed in the first place. Under the circumstances it is obvious that bar A is nothing more than land formed by deposition after the channel was abandoned. 95 The evidence that bar D and part of bar B, lying to the west of bar A, and inside the Barrett Survey lines, were not identifiable land in place is equally inconclusive. It is conceded that the eastern end of the Barrett Survey was made up of sandy material. Thus, even if the river changed by avulsive movements through the end of the meander lobe, the land remaining in place would have been low and composed of sand. 42 96 The trial court also found that the land which had previously occupied the area shown as bar C on the 1879 map had been completely eroded away and that bar C had formed thereafter as a middle bar as the thalweg moved to the west. The court observed: If bar 'C' were land-in-place which had existed prior to 1879, it would have supported the growth of cottonwoods or other vegetation more substantial than willows by 1890. 43 433 F.Supp. at 77. Although it is possible that the land represented by bar C may have completely eroded, it is entirely speculative to say that that is what occurred. The record also supports the possibility that bar C, located on the eastern end of the lobe, was the same surface area described by Barrett in his notes and was not built up by accretive deposits. The record is insufficient to prove what actually occurred. 97 Under defendants' accretion theory bar C would of necessity have been comprised of relatively newly deposited soil since it was located close to the 1879 position of the thalweg. Nevertheless, the record shows that willows were growing on bar C in 1879 indicating, as Dr. McQuivey, a government witness, theorized, that the bar may well have been land in place. 44 The fact that cottonwoods were not also growing on the bar does not prove the contrary. Bar C, along with bars B and D, was located near the eastern end of the Barrett Survey which Barrett described as sandy soil and frequently inundated. Testimony in the record shows that cottonwoods did not thrive in areas subject to frequent inundation. We find the evidence concerning bar C to be highly conjectural and inconclusive as to whether it formed by accretion or was in fact identifiable land in place. 98 There exists another basic reason why we regard the evidence of the defendants as insubstantial. The opinion of the defendants' experts 45 that no identifiable land remained in place after the movement of the river sometime between 1875 and 1879 is essentially based upon inferences drawn from the 1879 map admittedly prepared in a 10-day period during the June rise of the Missouri River when the river was as much as five feet above its ordinary high water level. At the time the river was shown to be nearly 10,000 feet wide, whereas in 1875 the bed had been only approximately 800 feet across. Soundings taken at that time demonstrate that a substantial land area was immediately below the surface of the flood water. The defendants do not contend that the river bed permanently expanded to 10,000 feet as shown in 1879; it obviously would be much narrower upon subsidence. See, e. g., the 1890 Missouri River Commission Map, set out as Plate V, infra, in which the river is shown to be no more than 3,500 feet wide. The existence or nonexistence of identifiable land in place could not have been accurately assessed at a time when the river's flow was abnormally high during floods which completely inundated the adjacent land. Thus, any inferences drawn from the alleged land forms exhibited on the 1879 map appear to be highly conjectural. Substantial evidence cannot be based upon an inference drawn from facts which are uncertain or speculative and which raise only a conjecture or possibility. 46 See Polk v. Ford Motor Co., 529 F.2d 259, 271 (8th Cir.), cert. denied, 426 U.S. 907, 96 S.Ct. 2229, 48 L.Ed.2d 832 (1976); Wilson v. Volkswagen of America, Inc., 561 F.2d 494, 517 n. 65 (4th Cir. 1977); Padgett v. Buxton-Smith Mercantile Co., 262 F.2d 39, 41 (10th Cir. 1958); Gilbert v. Gulf Oil Corp., 175 F.2d 705, 709 (4th Cir. 1949). 47 As this court indicated in Uhlhorn v. U. S. Gypsum Co., 366 F.2d at 219-20, if land over which a channel changes during abnormal high water periods, inundating all intervening land masses, is identifiable as the same land mass upon subsidence of the high water, the boundary does not change even though the land's surface may be somewhat eroded. 99 Defendants' experts also relied upon inferences drawn from the existence of remnant channel formations, from the parallel positioning of bars A, B, C and D and their interpretation of applicable principles of hydrology. The record, in our judgment, requires us to give little or no probative effect to the ultimate conclusion reached from these factual premises. 100