Court Opinion

ID: 9419611
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 22:50:27.214243+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:22:19.394458
License: Public Domain

Mr. Justice Douglas,
dissenting.
I think the claims which these Indians assert are claims “arising under or growing out of the treaty of July 30, 1863.”
*359He who comes to my abode and bargains for free transit or a right of way across the land on which I live and which I proclaim to be my own certainly recognizes that I have a claim to it. That and more was done here. Routes of travel through this Shoshone country, the establishment of military agricultural settlements and military posts, the maintenance of ferries over the rivers, the erection of houses and settlements, the location, construction, and operation of a railroad, the maintenance of telegraph and overland stage lines were all negotiated. These provisions alone constitute plain recognition by the United States that it was dealing with people who had the power to grant these rights of travel and settlement. The United States, of course, did not need to follow that course. It could have invaded this Indian country and extinguished Indian title by the sword or by appropriation. United States v. Santa Fe Pacific R. Co., 314 U. S. 339, 347, and cases cited. But it did not choose that course. It chose to negotiate a treaty. And through the medium of the treaty it obtained from these Indians rights of way, rights to settle, rights of transit. It was stated in Worcester v. Georgia, 6 Pet. 515, 556, that “The acceptance of these cessions is an acknowledgment of the right of the Cherokees to make or withhold them.” That is good law. It is as applicable here as it was in that early case. There, to be sure, lands had been specifically set apart for the Cherokees. But that is not a material difference. Indian title is the right to occupancy based on aboriginal possession. United States v. Santa Fe Pacific R. Co., supra. It has been the policy of the United States from the beginning to respect that right of occupancy. Id., p. 345. As stated in Mitchel v. United States, 9 Pet. 711, 746, the Indian “right of occupancy is considered as sacred as the fee simple of the whites.” Thus we may not say that because these Indians had only Indian title this case can *360be distinguished from Worcester v. Georgia, supra. When the United States obtained these cessions it acknowledged whatever claim to the land these Indians had. The Indians ask no more now.
Moreover, the Senate in ratifying the treaty made clear that it construed the treaty as recognizing the title or claim of these Indians to this land. The amendment added in the Senate provided: “Nothing herein contained shall be construed or taken to admit any other or greater title or interest in the lands embraced within the territories described in said treaty in said tribes or bands of Indians than existed in them upon the acquisition of said territories from Mexico by the laws thereof.” That should put beyond dispute that the Senate understood the treaty to accord recognition of the title which the Indians had under Mexican law. To say it gives no recognition to any claim is to erase this provision from the treaty.
But if there is still any doubt as to the meaning of the treaty it should be wholly removed by another of its provisions. The treaty stated that “The country claimed by Pokatello, for himself and his people, is bounded on the west by Raft River and on the east by the Porteneuf Mountains.”
That is now brushed aside as irrelevant. But we should remember that no counsel sat at the elbow of Pokatello when the treaty was drafted. It was written in a language foreign to him. He was not a conveyancer. He was not cognizant of distinctions in title. He neither had nor gave deeds to his land. There was no recording office. But he knew the land where he lived and for which he would fight. If the standards of the frontier are to govern, his assertion of ownership and its recognition by the United States could hardly have been plainer.
We should remember the admonition in Jones v. Meehan, 175 U. S. 1, 11, that in construing a treaty between the United States and an Indian tribe it must always be *361borne in mind “that the negotiations for the treaty are conducted, on the part of the United States, an enlightened and powerful nation, by representatives skilled in diplomacy, masters of a written language, understanding the modes and forms of creating the various technical estates known to their law, and assisted by an interpreter employed by themselves; that the treaty is drawn up by them and in their own language; that the Indians, on the other hand, are a weak and dependent people, who have no written language and are wholly unfamiliar with all the forms of legal expression, and whose only knowledge of the terms in which the treaty is framed is that imparted to them by the interpreter employed by the United States; and that the treaty must therefore be construed, not according to the technical meaning of its words to learned lawyers, but in the sense in which they would naturally be understood by the Indians.”
When the standard is not observed, what these Indians did not lose to the railroads and to the land companies they lose in the fine web of legal niceties.
As stated by the Attorneys General of Idaho and Utah who appear here as amici curiae: “The result is that a peaceful and friendly people, lulled into a sense of security by the proffers of the United States of peace and amity, have been reduced from a nation able to wrest their living from their primitive ancestral home to a nondescript, homeless, and poverty-stricken aggregation of bands of Indians, without the means to compete in the modem civilization which had disseised them. Until the treaty with petitioners, petitioners were so strong and formidable that the trouble and expense of taking their lands by war— leaving out of account the dishonor that would have been involved in proceeding against a nation which had given no cause for war — would have far outweighed the expense of settling with them for their lands at whatever the cost in money. But the United States did neither. Congress *362felt it could not at that time afford to extinguish petitioners’ title by purchase. Consequently, for a meager consideration, the petitioners granted respondent certain valuable rights in those lands. For respondent, under these circumstances, to attempt to deny petitioners’ title is unworthy of our country. The faith of this nation having been pledged in the treaties, the honor of the nation demands, and the jurisdictional act requires, that these long-unsettled grievances be settled by this court in simple justice to a downtrodden people.”
The story has been told before. Chester Fee, Chief Joseph (1936); Howard Fast, The Last Frontier (1944).
Mr. Justice Frankfurter and Mr. Justice Murphy join in this dissent.