Court Opinion

ID: 9425999
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 23:16:25.84014+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:22:58.502336
License: Public Domain

*213Mr. Justice Rehnquist,
with whom Mr. Justice Stewart joins,
dissenting.
I do not agree with the Court’s conclusion, ante, at 198, that “ [congressional approval was given” to the provisions of Art. 6 of the Agreement of May 9, 1891.
The Supremacy Clause of the Constitution specifies both “Laws” and “Treaties” as enactments which are the supreme law of the land, “any Thing in the Constitution or Laws of any State to the Contrary notwithstanding.” If the game laws enacted by the State of Washington, containing customary provisions respecting seasons in which deer may be hunted, are invalid under the Supremacy Clause, they must be so by virtue of either a treaty or a law enacted by Congress. Concededly the Agreement of 1891, between Commissioners appointed by the President and members of the Colville Confederated Tribes was not a treaty; it was not intended to be such, and Congress had explicitly provided 20 years earlier that Indian tribes were not to be considered as independent nations with which the United States could deal under the treaty power. Washington’s game laws, therefore, can only be invalid by reason of some law enacted by Congress.
The Court’s opinion refers us to the Act of Congress of June 21, 1906, which authorized monetary compensation to the Colvilles for the termination of the northern half of their reservation, and to a series of appropriation measures enacted during the following five years. There is, however, not one syllable in any of these Acts about Indian hunting or fishing rights, and it is fair to say that a member of Congress voting for or against them would not have had the remotest idea, even from the most careful of readings, that they would preserve Indian hunting and fishing rights. But because the language in the Act of 1906 states that it was enacted for the purpose of *214“carrying out” the Agreement of 1891, and because language in subsequent appropriations Acts described the Act of 1906 as “ratifying” the Agreement of 1891, the Court concludes that Congress enacted as substantive law all 12 articles of the agreement.
The Court relies on three earlier decisions of this Court as settling the proposition that Congress could legislatively ratify the 1891 Agreement, and that once accomplished, the “legislation ratifying the 1891 Agreement, constituted those provisions . . . 'Laws of the United States ... in Pursuance’ of the Constitution, and the supreme law of the land.” Ante, at 204. Congress could undoubtedly have enacted the provisions of the 1891 Agreement, but the critical question is whether it did so. Par from supporting the result reached by the Court in this case, the decisions of this Court in Choate v. Trapp, 224 U. S. 665 (1912), Perrin v. United States, 232 U. S. 478 (1914), and Dick v. United States, 208 U. S. 340 (1908), show instead how virtually devoid of support in either precedent or reason that result is.
Each of those cases did involve an agreement negotiated between Commissioners representing the United States and Indian bands and tribes. Each of the agreements was held to have been ratified by Congress, and its substantive provisions to have thereby been made law. But the contrast with the manner in which Congress accomplished ratification in those cases, and the manner in which it acted in this case, is great indeed.
Choate involved the Atoka Agreement negotiated between the Dawes Commission and Choctaw and Chickasaw representatives in 1897. The following year, Congress enacted the Curtis Act, 30 Stat. 495, the relevant provisions of § 29 of which are as follows:
“That the agreement made by the Commission to the Five Civilized Tribes with commissions repre*215senting the Choctaw and Chickasaw tribes of Indians on the twenty-third day of April, eighteen hundred and ninety-seven, as herein amended, is hereby ratified and confirmed ....” 30 Stat. 505.
The section then proceeds to set out in haec verba the full text of the Atoka Agreement.
Perrin v. United States, supra, involved the sale of liquor on ceded land, contrary to a prohibition contained in the cession agreement negotiated with the Sioux Indians in December 1892. That agreement was ratified by Congress in an Act of Aug. 15, 1894, 28 Stat. 286, 314, in which Congress used much the same method as it had employed in Choate:
“Sec. 12. The following agreement, made by ... is hereby accepted, ratified, and confirmed.”
Then followed, within the text of the Act of Congress itself, the articles of agreement in haec verba. Likewise, ratification of the agreement involved in Dick, supra, was accomplished by explicit statutory language and in haec verba incorporation of the articles of agreement.
The Court today treats the Act of June 21, 1906, as simply another one of these instances in which Congress exercised its power to elevate mere agreements into the supreme law of the land. But it has done so with little attention to the critical issue, that of whether Congress actually exercised this power. Whereas the exercise was manifest in Choate, Perrin, and Dick, it is evidenced in the present case by nothing more than little scraps of language, ambiguous at best, in several Acts of Congress which contain not a word of the language of Art. 6 of the 1891 Agreement.- I think consideration of all of the legislative materials, including the actual language used by Congress on the occasions when it spoke, rather than the elided excerpts relied upon by the Court, show that there was no ratification of Art. 6.
*216The original Colville Reservation was created by Executive Order in 1872. It consisted of over three million acres lying between the Okanogan and Columbia Rivers in the northern part of the State of Washington. In 1890 Congress created a Commission to “negotiate with said Colville and other bands of Indians on said reservation for the cession of such portion of said reservation as said Indians may be willing to dispose of, that the same may be open to white settlement.” 26 Stat. 336, 356. The following year Commissioners appointed by the President met with representatives of the Colville Confederated Tribes. The Agreement of May 9, 1891, was executed to “go into effect from and after its approval by Congress.”
Article 1 of the Agreement provided that the northern half of the Colville Reservation, as it existed under the Executive Order of 1872, should be vacated. Article 5 provided that “in consideration of the cession surrender and relinquishment to the United States” of the northern half of the reservation, the United States would pay to the members of the tribe the sum of $1,500,000. Article 6, quoted in the opinion of the Court, contained provisions respecting tax exemption and Indian hunting and fishing rights.
The Agreement was presented to the 52d Congress for ratification, but that body adamantly refused to approve it. The characterization in the Court's opinion of the Act of July 1, 1892, 27 Stat. 62, as the “first” in a series of statutes in which congressional approval was given to the Agreement of May 9, 1891, is a bit of historical legerdemain. Doubts were expressed as to whether the Indians had title to the reservation, since it had been created by Executive Order, thus again highlighting disagreement between the Executive and Legislative Branches as to how best to deal with the Indian tribes.
*217The Act of July 1, 1892, vacated the northern half of the Colville Reservation, as it had been established by President Grant, “notwithstanding any executive order or other proceeding whereby the same was set apart as a reservation for any Indians or bands of Indians,” and declared that “the same shall be open to settlement and entry by the proclamation of the President of the United States and shall be disposed of under the general laws applicable to the disposition of public lands in the State of Washington.” 27 Stat. 63. Section 4 of the Act tracked Art. 2 of the agreement, providing that each Indian then residing on the ceded portion of the reservation should be entitled to select 80 acres of the ceded land to be allotted to him in severalty. Section 5 of the Act tracked Art. 3 of the agreement, providing that Indians then residing in the ceded portion of the reservation should have a right to occupy and reside on its remaining parts, if they chose that in preference to receiving an allotment. Section 6 of the Act tracked Art. 4 of the agreement, and concerned various school and mill sites within the ceded portion.
But conspicuous by their absence from the Act of July 1, 1892, were any provision for the payment of the $1,500,-000, and any reference whatsoever to the Agreement’s provisions dealing with hunting and fishing, rights and immunity from taxation. Far from being the “first” of a series of Acts ratifying the entirety of the 1891 Agreement, the Act provided, in § 8:
“That nothing herein contained shall be construed as recognizing title or ownership of said Indians to any part of the said Colville Reservation, whether that hereby restored to the public domain or that still reserved by the Government for their use and occupancy.” 27 Stat. 64.
The Act of July 1, 1892, became law without the sig*218nature of President Harrison. Members of the Colville Confederated Tribes became justifiably alarmed that it had terminated the northern half of the reservation without authorizing the compensation for which they had bargained. After a 14-year campaign, described in detail in the report of Butler and Vale v. United States, 43 Ct. Cl. 497 (1908), they obtained congressional relief. But the relief embodied in the statutes enacted in 1906 and subsequent years did not amount to a full adoption and ratification of the 1891 Agreement. Rather, the description of the efforts to obtain relief, as well as the legislation which resulted, demonstrates that the Indians were concerned only with the compensation promised by the 1891 Agreement, and not with whatever ancillary rights were accorded by its Art. 6.
The following excerpts from the Court of Claims opinion, which would appear to have the added authenticity that is given by contemporaneitjq describe some of the events:
“In pursuance of the [1891] agreement the lands so ceded were by act of Congress thrown open to public settlement; but no appropriation of money was made, and that part of the agreement providing for its payment was never complied with until the passage of the act of June SI, 1906. The Indians became anxious and, justly, quite solicitous Their appeals to the Congress subsequent to their agreement was met in 1892 by an adverse report from the Senate Committee on Indian Affairs, in which their right to compensation as per agreement was directly challenged by a most positive denial of their title to the lands in question.
“In May, 1894, the said Colville Indians entered into a contract with Levi Maish, of Pennsylvania, and Hugh H. Gordon, of Georgia, attorneys and *219counselors at law, by the terms of which the said attorneys were to prosecute their said claim against the United States and receive as compensation therefor 15 per cent of whatever amount they might recover. . . . Nothing was accomplished for the Indians under the Maish-Gordon contract. Notwithstanding its expiration, however, a number of attorneys claim to have rendered efficient services and to have accomplished, by the permission and authority of the Congress and the committees thereof, the final compliance with the agreement of 1891 and secured by the act of June 21, 1906, an appropriation covering the money consideration mentioned in said agreement.” 43 Ct. Cl., at 514 — 515 (emphasis added).
The agreement which formed the basis of the suit in Butler and Vale was, as just described, entered into between the Colvilles and two attorneys whom they retained to press their claim. It, too, recites that the Indians’ concern was directed to the Government’s failure to compensate them for the northern half of the reservation:
“ ‘And whereas the principal consideration to said Indians for the cession and surrender of said portion of the reservation was the express agreement upon the part of the United States Government to pay to said Indians ‘the sum of one million five hundred thousand dollars ($1,500,000) ...;’
“ ‘And whereas the United States Government has failed to comply with the terms of said agreement, and no provision has been made to pay said Indians the amount stipulated in the said agreement for the cession of said lands;
“ ‘And whereas the said Indians entered into said agreement with an implicit trust in the good faith *220of the United States Government, and now most earnestly protest that their lands should not be taken from them without the payment of the just compensation stipulated in said agreement;
The purpose of this agreement is to secure the presentation and prosecution of the claims of said Indians for payment for their interest in said ceded lands and to secure the services of said Maish and Gordon as counsel and attorneys for the prosecution and collection of said claims.' " Id., at 502 (emphasis added).
Similarly, the letter of protest by the Chairman of the Colville Indian Commission, ante, at 199 n. 6, focused solely on Congress’ failure to provide the Indians “the solace of compensation.”
As a result of the efforts of the Indians, their friends, and their attorneys, Congress ultimately acceded to their claim for compensation. It did so in the Act of June 21, 1906, which is the Indian Department Appropriations Act of 1906. With respect to the Colville Confederated Tribes, the Act provided as follows:
“To carry into effect the agreement bearing date May ninth, eighteen hundred and ninety-one, . . . there shall be set aside and held in the Treasury of the United States for the use and benefit of said Indians, which shall at all times be subject to the appropriation of Congress and payment to said Indians, in full payment for one million five hundred thousand [1,500,000] acres of land opened to settlement by the Act of Congress, . . . approved July first, eighteen hundred and ninety-two, the sum of one million five hundred thousand dollars [$1,500,000] 34 Stat. 377-378.
*221This Act is surely the major recognition by Congress of the claims of the Colvilles, and even with the most liberal construction I do not see how it can be read to do more than authorize the appropriation of $1,500,000 to effectuate the compensation article of the 1891 Agreement. Not a word is said about tax exemption, nor about hunting and fishing rights.
The Court also relies on language in the Indian Department Appropriations Act of 1907, 34 Stat. 1015, and substantially identical language in each of the succeeding four annual Indian Department Appropriation Acts. After the usual language of appropriation, the Act goes on to provide:
“In part payment to the Indians residing on the Colville Reservation for the cession by said Indians to the United States of one million five hundred thousand acres of land opened to settlement by an Act of Congress . . . approved July first, eighteen hundred and ninety-two, being a part of the full sum set aside and held in the Treasury of the United States in payment for said land under the terms of the Act approved June twenty-first, nineteen hundred and six, ratifying the agreement ceding said land to the United States under date of May ninth, eighteen hundred and ninety-one, three hundred thousand dollars . . . 34 Stat. 1050-1051.
Thus the Court rests its decision in this case on two legislative pronouncements. The first is the 1906 Act authorizing payment of money to the Colvilles and reciting that the authorization was made to “carry into effect” the 1891 Agreement. The second is the series of Acts appropriating funds to cover the 1906 authorization and referring to the authorization as “ratifying the agreement ceding said land.” On the basis of these Acts, both of which are part of the mechanism by which Congress ex*222pends public funds, the Court has concluded that provisions of the 1891 agreement utterly unrelated to the payment of money became the supreme law of the land, even though there is no indication that the Colvilles sought any relief other than with respect to the Government's failure to pay compensation, or that Congress intended any relief affecting the use of land it quite plainly had determined should be returned to the public domain.
A far more reasoned interpretation of these legislative materials would begin by placing them in the context of the Executive/Legislative dispute over Indian policy and authority. A year after the signing of the 1891 Agreement, Congress clearly indicated its doubt as to whether President Grant was justified in setting aside three million acres for the Colvilles, and as to whether his Executive Order actually conveyed title. In the Act of July 1, 1892, Congress chose to take what the Indians had expressed a willingness to surrender, but to give only part of what the Commissioners had agreed the Government should give in return. The Colvilles, after a 14-year battle in and around the legislative halls of Congress, obtained the monetary relief which they sought. Sympathy with their plight should not lead us now to distort what is on its face no more than congressional response to demands for payment into congressional enactment of the entire 1891 agreement.
I would affirm the judgment of the Supreme Court of Washington.