Opinion ID: 1310725
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Off-Reservation Treaty Fishing Rights

Text: During the 1850s Governor Stevens of Washington Territory negotiated a number of treaties with Northwest Indian tribes. The Treaty of Point Elliott was typical of those treaties in guaranteeing the signatory tribes [t]he right of taking fish at usual and accustomed grounds and stations . . . in common with all citizens of the Territory. 12 Stat. at 928. In Washington I, the seminal case construing this clause, the district court held that, with small exceptions, the treaty clause reserved to the Indians the right to take fifty percent of the annual harvestable runs of salmon and steelhead trout. [2] 384 F.Supp. at 343. It further held that fourteen tribes or bands, not including the present Samish Tribe, were entitled to off-reservation treaty fishing rights as political successors to tribes that had signed treaties guaranteeing tribal fishing rights. Id. at 406. Two of the tribes so entitled, the Stillaguamish and Upper Skagit Tribes, were not federally recognized. Id. at 378-79.