Court Opinion

ID: 9856000
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-24 06:36:06.061563+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:37:24.842070
License: Public Domain

McQUADE, Chief Justice
(concurring specially).
The broad spectrum of issues addressed by the majority opinion necessarily has drawn the analysis rather thin. My purpose in filing this supplementary opinion is to make clear the thrust of the Court’s decision on several critical points. When reduced to its essence, the State’s argument in this case is: (1) the Fort Bridger Treaty does not contain a fishing right; (2) even if it does, the treaty does not protect fishing at the geographical location in question; and (3) in any event, off-reservation fishing by Indians under the treaty is fully subject to the same state regulations that apply to other citizens. The Court today decisively rejects each of these contentions.
I.
The State’s assertion that the treaty does not guarantee a fishing right merits little additional discussion. The testimony of Dr. Liljeblad, the notes of General Augur and the Agreement of 1898, described in the majority opinion, clearly establish the existence of a treaty fishing right as an objective fact. Nevertheless, the State has suggested on appeal that, as a matter of law, the “grant” of a right by treaty should not be implied. The notion that Indian fishing rights were “granted” by the United States-affronts common sense and conflicts with applicable holdings of the Supreme Court. The Indians were here before we were. The record in this case reveals that salmon was a staple in the diet of the Bannock and Shoshone for jmars prior to consummation of the treaty. The right to fish, unlike the right to occupy certain lands, never was extinguished by conquest.1 The treaty did not grant a fishing right; rather, the Indians reserved a right they had always exercised.2 The State’s attempt to deny that right under the treaty, because of differences in translation between the English language and Indian dialects, casts a history-lengthened shadow of shame on this case. Indian treaties have been tainted with enough dishonor. This treaty must be interpreted as the Indian signatories understood it. “The language used in treaties with the Indians should never be construed to their prejudice.” 3 The Fort Bridger Treaty contains a fishing right to which this Court extends full recognition.
*768II.
The geographical scope of the fishing right is a phantom issue, deprived of substance by the plain language of the treaty itself. The fishing right may be exercised on any “unoccupied lands of the United States.” Despite this express provision, the State argues that fishing is protected only within lands ceded by the Indians under the treaty. The defendant elected to meet this issue at trial by adducing historical evidence to prove that the tribes had frequented the Salmon River drainage area, so that if there were a ceded lands restriction, the fishing in question nevertheless would be protected. The district court properly treated that evidence as •dispositive of the issue.
However, resolving the question on the facts affords no basis to infer that this Court accepts the ceded lands limitation in theory. To the contrary, nothing in the treaty itself supports such a limitation. The United States Supreme Court long ago discussed that point when it construed the Fort Bridger Treaty in Ward v. Race Horse.4 The Court interpreted “all unoccupied lands of the United States” to include any federally controlled areas over which Congress Tiad not yet granted state jurisdiction by passing an admission act superseding prior treaties. Subsequent demise of the superseding act theory5 has removed the only 'limit the Supreme Court perceived in geographical application of the Fort Bridger Treaty.
Moreover, the record in this case indicates that the regions traversed by the tribes were not rigidly defined. They reflected the changing patterns of distribution and availability of game. As the majority opinion explains, the fishing right was reserved by treaty to protect a source of tribal subsistence and to preserve an integral part of the native American culture. These purposes can be given meaningful effect in 1972, when many fishing streams have been damned, depleted or polluted, only if the treaty is interpreted literally to extend to any unoccupied federal lands where fishing opportunities remain. A ceded lands restriction would be inconsistent with the language and spirit of the Fort Bridger Treaty.
III.
The policy issues generated by the conflict between state regulations and Indian rights under a federal treaty occasionally obscure certain fundamental facts. The Fort Bridger Treaty is the “supreme law of the land” under Article VI, Section 2, of the United States Constitution.6 The Organic Act of the Territory of Idaho, in effect when the treaty was signed and ratified in 1868, provided that Indian treaties should be “faithfully and rigidly observed.” 7 When Idaho was admitted to the Union in 1890, Congress did not extinguish existing treaty rights; to the contrary, it provided that all applicable federal laws would continue in force and effect within the state.8 In State v. Arthur 9 this Court, adhering to basic constitutional law and eschewing extraneous policy questions, held simply and clearly that
*769“the statute of any state enacted pursuant to its police power which conflicts with any treaty of the United States constitutes an interference with matters that are within the exclusive scope of federal power and, hence cannot he permitted to stand * * *. [T]his in effect holds the application of the statute in abeyance during the existence of the treaty.” 10
The Arthur opinion further recognized that if the State were permitted to impose upon Indians the same regulations applicable to other citizens, then the treaty in reality would provide “no right at all.” 11 To uphold the treaty fishing right while subjecting its exercise to the full scope of Fish and Game Department regulations would be a transparent hypocrisy.
In Puyallup Tribe v. Department of Game,12 the United States Supreme Court recently described the police power of the State of Washington as “overriding” in a case where the Indians had engaged in commercial net fishing, indiscriminantly catching large quantities of spawning salmon and admittedly endangering the fishery.13 The treaty in question provided only the right to take fish “at all usual and accustomed places, in common with” citizens of Washington Territory.14 The Court held that the manner and extent of such fishing could be regulated by the state if the controls were “appropriate,” not discriminatory against the Indians in view of their upstream fishing locations, and were “necessary” to preserve the salmon run.15 The Court supported this holding by carefully selecting precedents from its own prior decisions construing qualified, or shared, treaty fishing rights.16 In contrast the case before us more closely resembles Arthur, where the treaty right was exclusive and its exercise was not contaminated by extensive commercial exploitation of the wildlife resource. Nothing in Puyallup requires deviation from Arthur in deciding this case.17
The thrust of the majority opinion can be fully grasped only when its language is understood to represent an acknowledgment of Puyallup while the Court adheres to Arthur. The meaning of this synthesis is best expressed in specific terms. The State may exercise its police power to prevent *770destruction of the fishery. Such regulation does not conflict with the treaty fishing right; for in reality no such right exists if there are no fish. However, the purposes underlying the treaty right, to protect a traditional source of tribal subsistence and to preserve an important element in the Indian way of life, are not otherwise subject to state interference. To fulfill these purposes the Fort Bridger Treaty affords members of the Shoshone-Bannock tribes first priority to fish in streams on “unoccupied lands of the United States.” That priority cannot be compromised, directly or indirectly, by restricting Indian fishing in order to maintain the fishery for other users. The treaty fishing right may not be infringed to provide fish for non-Indian sporting or commercial interests. These interests are honest and legitimate; but as a matter of law, they cannot intrude on a right guaranteed by federal treaty. The Indians’ right to a share of the fish commensurate with the enunciated purposes of the Fort Bridger Treaty is absolute.18
In State v. Arthur this Court noted that the quantity of wildlife required to satisfy the treaty right should be established through “appropriate negotiations,” 19 subject to judicial review if required to protect the Indians’ treaty right. Such negotiations should be structured to permit full and fair tribal participation.20 Furthermore, the federal government, as a party to the Fort Bridger Treaty, is obliged to protect the rights secured thereunder by assisting the tribes in the course of negotiations. Occasional dispatch of a representative from the Department of Justice, or Department of the Interior, to argue the Indian cause once litigation has commenced, is not sufficient to discharge the special duty owed to a maltreated people threatened with further attenuation of their federal rights. Indeed, public officials at all levels of government would do well to reflect on the enduring importance of treaty rights in twentieth-century America:
“As to special Indian rights, since being an Indian is hereditary, the rights at first glance seem anomalous in a democracy; when we study them, however, the anomaly fades. They are part of a quid pro quo promised solemnly by use in treaties, agreements and laws, and upheld over and again by our courts, in exchange for the whole area of the United States and for the ending of rightful independence.” 21

. On the significance of conquest in cases concerning land, compare Johnson v. McIntosh, 21 U.S. (8 Wheat.) 543, 5 L.Ed. 681 (1823), and Tee-Hit-Ton Indians v. United States, 348 U.S. 272, 75 S.Ct. 313, 99 L.Ed. 314 (1955), with United States, etc. v. Santa Fe & Pacific R.R., 314 U.S. 339, 62 S.Ct. 248, 86 L.Ed. 260 (1941). The “might makes right” doctrine underlying McIntosh and Tee-Hit-Ton is criticized in The Supreme Court, 1954 Term, 69 Harvard L.Rev. 119, 150 (1955).

. Tulee v. State of Washington, 315 U.S. 681, 62 S.Ct. 862, 86 L.Ed. 1115 (1942); United States v. Winans, 198 U.S. 371, 25 S.Ct. 662, 49 L.Ed. 1089 (1905).

. Worcester v. Georgia, 31 U.S. (6 Pet.) 515, 581, 8 L.Ed. 483 (1832). Accord, e. g., United States v. Kagama, 118 U.S. 375, 6 S.Ct. 1109, 30 L.Ed. 228 (1886); Seufert Bros. Co. v. United States, 249 U.S. 194, 39 S.Ct. 203, 63 L.Ed. 555 (1919); Choctaw Nation v. Oklahoma, 397 U.S. 620, 90 S.Ct. 1328, 25 L.Ed.2d 615 (1970).

. 163 U.S. 504, 16 S.Ct. 1076, 41 L.Ed. 244 (1896).

. See Tulee v. State of Washington, and United States v. Winans, supra note 2. Cf. United States v. Lee Ten Tai, 185 U.S. 213, 22 S.Ct. 629, 46 L.Ed. 878 (1902); Cook v. United States, 288 U.S. 102, 53 S.Ct. 305, 77 L.Ed. 641 (1933); 7 Idaho L.Rev. 49, 59-61 (1970).

. U.S.Const., Art. VI, § 2 provides: “This Constitution, and the Laws of the United States which shall be made in Pursuance thereof; and all Treaties made, or which shall he made, under the Axithority of the United States, shall he the supreme Law of the Land; and the Judges in every State shall he hound thereby, any Thing in the Constitution or Laws of any State to the Contrary notwithstanding." (Emphasis supplied)

. 12 Stat. 808, ch. 117, § 17.

. 26 Stat. 215, ch. 656, § 19.

. 74 Idaho 251, 261 P.2d 135 (1953); cert. denied, 347 U.S. 937, 74 S.Ct. 627, 98 L.Ed. 1087 (1954); accord, People v. Jondreau, 384 Mich. 539, 185 N.W.2d 375 (1971).

. 74 Idaho at 262, 261 P.2d at 141.

. 74 Idaho at 264-265, 261 P.2d 135.

. 391 U.S. 392, 88 S.Ct. 1725, 20 L.Ed.2d 689 (1968).

. See 391 U.S. at 402, note 15, 88 S.Ct. 1725.

. Treaty of Medicine Creek, 10 Stat. 1132 (1854).

. The appeal was remanded for findings on the necessity of state regulation. The Washington Supreme Court holding in Puyallup, that the state must prove the controls to be “reasonable and necessary,” was affirmed. 70 Wash.2d 245, 422 P.2d 754 (1967). See also State v. James, 72 Wash.2d 746, 435 P.2d 521 (1967); Maison v. Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Reservation, 314 F.2d 169 (9th Cir. 1963); State v. Gurnoe, 53 Wis.2d 390, 192 N.W.2d 892 (1972). In his separate opinion on this case, Justice Shepard protests imposition of this burden on the state; but if the burden were otherwise assigned, the Indians would be entitled to exercise their federal treaty right only when they could prove conflicting state regulations to be unnecessary to the state conservation program. This is entirely inconsistent with the prior constitutional status of the federal treaty right as the “supreme law of the land.” Moreover, as the majority notes in a practical sense, it is the State, not the Indian defendant, which has the resources and expertise to supply the relevant conservation data.

. Tulee v. State of Washington, and United States v. Winans, supra note 2; Kennedy v. Becker, 241 U.S. 556, 36 S.Ct. 705, 60 L.Ed. 1166 (1916).

. It has been suggested (see State v. Gurnoe, supra note 15) that the Supreme Court decision in Organized Village of Kake v. Egan, 369 U.S. 60, 82 S.Ct. 562, 7 L.Ed.2d 573 (1962), recognized state power to invade an exclusive fishing right. However, as Justice Frankfurter plainly indicated in the opinion of the Court, the Indian claim to a fishing right in that case was not based on federal law. Bather, it was asserted as an extension of aboriginal occupancy rights. Consequently, the conflict between state regulations and a federal right, which forms the heart of the present case and of State v. Arthur, was not at issue in Kake.

. See the parallel discussion in Sohappy v. Smith, 302 F.Supp. 899 (D.Or.1969).

. 74 Idaho, at 265, 261 P.2d 135.

. Sohappy v. Smith, supra note 18, 302 F.Supp., at 911-912.

. LaFarge, Termination of Federal Supervision, 311 Annals 41-42 (1957).