71. 4 St. 411.
72. U.S. Commissioner of Indian Affairs, Annual Report (Washington: USCIA, Government Printing Office, 1831), 172.
73. Ibid.
74. U.S. House, Committee of the Whole House, A Report on Establishing Trading Houses with Indian Tribes, House Report No. 59, 1st Cong., 1st sess. (January 22, 1818), 3.
75. G. Edward White, History of the Supreme Court of the United States: The Marshall Court and Cultural Change, 1815–1835 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991), 705.
76. 4 St. 729.
77. 3 St. 383.
78. U.S. Congressional Globe, April 13, 1846, 666.
79. U.S. Congressional Globe, July 28, 1846, 1147.
80. Ibid. See also U.S. Senate, Committee on Indian Affairs, Memorial of John Ross. Document No. 331. May 4, 1846, 5.
81. Ibid., Memorial of John Ross, 6.
82. Ibid., 8.
83. U.S. Senate, Memorial of John Ross, 6.
84. 7 St. 478. This treaty and many others may be found in Charles J. Kappler, comp., Indian Affairs: Law and Treaties, vol. 2 (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1903).
85. 45 U.S. (4. How.) 568 (1846).
86. These facts are from the written transcript of the United States Supreme Court Records and Briefs, pt. 1, vol. 1, December 1845 to December 1846, reel 10. These are microfilm reports of the legal documents—transcripts, legal briefs, certiorari documents, amicus curiae briefs, and so forth—accompanying the case. For some cases, the amount of documentation was slight; for others, it was voluminous, especially those of the later twentieth century. These are outstanding sources of original documentation, particularly the attorneys’ briefs.
87. Johnson v. McIntosh, 21 U.S. (8 Wheat.) 543, 593 (1823).
88. John P. Frank, Justice Daniel Dissenting: A Biography of Peter V. Daniel, 1784–1860 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1964), 283.
89. This was a common practice: when uncertainty or serious division of opinion arose on questions before a lower federal court, the presiding judges could send the disputed questions up to the Supreme Court for their answer. Today the procedure is called “writ of certification.”
90. Frank, Justice Daniel, quoting from the Arkansas State Gazette, 283.
91. Ibid., 284.
92. Ibid.
93. 45 U.S. (4 How.) 567, 574 (1846).
94. 45 U.S. (4 How.) 567, 569.
95. Ibid., 570.
96. It figures prominently in United States v. Wheeler, 435 U.S. 313 (1975), and in a case I will discuss later, Oliphant v. Suquamish Indian Tribe, 435 U.S. 191 (1978). See Milner Ball’s article “Constitution, Court” (22–42) for an excellent discussion on the origin of the notion of incorporation and a good analysis of the case law that involves the concept.
97. 45 U.S. (4 How.) 567, 571.
98. David O’Brien, Storm Center: The Supreme Court in American Politics, 3d ed. (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1993), 203.
99. 19 How. 393 (1853).
100. 45 U.S. (4 How.) 567, 571–572.
101. 7 St. 478 (Kappler, 1903, 327).
102. 7 St. 478 (Kappler, 1903, 326).
103. 7 St. 478 (Kappler, 1903, 327).
104. See discussion in Chapter 1 on this dynamic and pivotal concept.
105. 45 U.S. (4 How.) 567, 572.
106. Ibid.
107. See especially Robert T. Coulter, “The Denial of Legal Remedies to Indian Nations Under United States Law,” American Indian Journal 3 (1977): 5–11; Newton, “Federal Power,” 235–236; and Petra T. Shattuck and Jill Norgren, Partial Justice: Federal Indian Law in a Liberal Constitutional System (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991).
108. 448 U.S. 371 (1980).
109. See especially Karl J. Kramer, “The Most Dangerous Branch: An Institutional Approach to Understanding the Role of the Judiciary in American Indian Jurisdictional Determinations,” Wisconsin Law Review 5–6 (1986): 989–1038.
110. Shattuck and Norgren, Partial Justice, 123.
111. Lewis Henkin, “Is There a ‘Political Question’ Doctrine?” Yale Law Journal 85 (Apr. 1976): 598.
112. Robert T. Coulter, “Legal Remedies Denied to Indian Nation Under U.S. Law,” Civil Rights Digest 10 (1978): 32.
113. Newton, “Federal Power,” 236.
114. 45 U.S. (4 How.) 567, 572 (1846).
115. Ibid., 572–573.
116. Ibid., 573.
117. Ibid.
118. Ibid.
119. 60 U.S. (11 How.) 730 (1850).
120. Ibid., 735–736.
121. 60 U.S. (19 How.) 393 (1857).
122. Ibid., 404–405.
123. U.S. Senate. Committee on the Judiciary. Extending the U.S. Criminal Laws Over Indian Territory, Senate Report No. 461, 29th Cong., 1st sess. (July 28, 1846).
124. Ibid., 2.
125. Ibid.
126. Ibid.
127. Ibid.
128. Ibid.
129. Frederick Jackson Turner, “The Problems of the West,” The Atlantic Monthly 78 (Sept. 1896): 295.
130. Ibid.
131. Ibid., 296.
132. A large number of tribes inhabiting Indian Territory had signed treaties with the Confederate States of America. See James M. Matthews, ed., The Statutes at Large of the Provisional Government of the Confederate States of America, reprint ed. (Indian Rocks Beach, Fla.: D & S Publishers, Inc., 1970), 289–411, which contains copies of these interesting treaties.
133. 15 St. 17, 18.
134. 16 St. 13, 40.
135. See Fred L. Israel, ed., The State of the Union Messages of the Presidents, 1790–1966. 3 vols. See vol. 2, 1199.
136. Ibid., 1199–2000.
137. U.S. Senate, Committee on the Pacific Railroad, Report on the Pacific Railroad, Report No. 219, 40th Cong., 3d sess. (1869), 15.
138. Ibid.
139. A good contemporary discussion on the history and legal ramifications of the effort to stop Indian treatymaking is found in George William Rice’s “Indian Rights: 25 U.S.C. Sec. 71: The End of Indian Sovereignty or a Self-Limitation of Contractual Ability,” American Indian Law Review 5 (1977): 239–253. Rice supports Cohen’s well-reasoned argument that the end of treatymaking did not destroy or weaken tribal political status, per se. The essence of treatymaking, in Cohen’s words “was destined . . . to be continued for many decades” in the form of agreements (1972 ed., 67).
140. U.S. Commissioner of Indian Affairs, Annual Report (Washington: USCIA, Government Printing Office, 1866), 15.
141. U.S. Commissioner of Indian Affairs, Annual Report (1869), 448.
142. U.S. Commissioner of Indian Affairs, Annual Report (1871), 1154.
143. U.S. Commissioner of Indian Affairs, Annual Report (1811).
144. U.S. Commissioner of Indian Affairs, Annual Report (1872), 471.
145. Vine Deloria Jr., “Congress in Its Wisdom: The Course of Indian Legislation,” in Sandra L. Cadwalader and Vine Deloria Jr., eds., The Aggressions of Civilization (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1984), 107.
146. Vine Deloria Jr., “Beyond the Pale: American Indians and the Constitution,” in Jules Lobel, ed., A Less Than Perfect Union (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1988), 255.
147. The “et cetera” reads as follows (78 U.S. 616 [1871]): “forty-four one-fourth-pounds papers tobacco, four thousand five hundred pounds leaf tobacco, three thousand pounds tobacco in lump, three hundred empty boxes and caddies, six stoves and pipes, two drums for stove, three hammers, one hatchet, one can sweet oil, two cropping brooms, four hundred and sixteen pounds liquorice, four hundred and eighty-two pounds sugar, five pounds sealing wax, wrappers for smoking tobacco, brass for stencils, seventy stencil brands, two pitchforks, one ash-bucket, shovel, and poker, one hundred and twenty-seven packages tobacco, one hydraulic press, one hydraulic pump, six retainers, one large platform scale, one p[ai]r small platform scales, one p[ai]r lever scales, four small rollers, twelve sets moulds, eight screw presses, four leavers, thirteen segment caddy b
locks, eighteen segment caddy bands, one large hydraulic wrench, eight small wrenches, twenty-one iron bars for track, one retainer for track, lot finishing irons, lot mould tin, one weight, one liquorice kettle, shovel and poker, one hydraulic leaver, one press and fixtures for manufacturing tobacco, one large tub seive, one common seive, twenty-one sinkers, two factory buildings used as a tobacco factory, and out-houses connected therewith.”
148. Ibid.
149. 78 U.S. 616, 618.
150. Ibid., 619.
151. Ibid., 620.
152. Ibid.
153. Ibid.
154. Robert K. Heimann, “The Cherokee Tobacco Case,” The Chronicles of Oklahoma 41 (1967): 319.
155. Ibid.
156. 78 U.S. 616, 620.
157. Ibid.
158. Ibid., 621.
159. Ibid.
160. Ibid., 622.
161. Cohen, Handbook of Federal Indian Law, reprint ed. (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1972), 265.
162. 78 U.S. 616, 622.
163. U.S. Supreme Court, Records & Briefs, “Brief for Plaintiffs in error, Boudinot and Garland” (1871), 16.
164. 78 U.S. 616, 622.
165. Ibid., 623.
166. U.S. Supreme Court, Records & Briefs, “Brief for Plaintiffs” (1871), 14.
167. Ibid., 62–63.
168. In 1883 the Court of Claims awarded him $3,272.25. He had petitioned for $175,000.
CHAPTER 3
1. Russel L. Barsh and James Y. Henderson, The Road: Indian Tribes and Political Liberty (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1980), 85.
2. 23 St. 385.
3. 24 St. 388.
4. 26 St. 794.
5. 30 St. 497.
6. 24 St. 182.
7. W. G. Rice, “The Position of the American Indian in the Law of the United States,” Journal of Comparative Legislation and International Law 16 (1934): 95.
8. Ibid.
9. George F. Canfield, “The Legal Position of the Indian,” American Law Review (January 1881): 27.
10. 27 St. 645 (1893).
11. U.S. House, Committee on Indian Affairs, Report on the Curtis Bill—Laws for the Indian Territory, House Report No. 593, 55th Cong., 2d sess. (1898), 2.
12. 30 St. 497 (1898).
13. Angie Debo, And Still the Waters Run: The Betrayal of the Five Civilized Tribes, Norman, Okla.: University of Oklahoma Press, 1989, pp. ix–x).
14. Francis P. Prucha, American Indian Policy in the Formative Years (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1962), 211.
15. U.S. Commissioner of Indian Affairs, Annual Report (1856), 557.
16. U.S. Commissioner of Indian Affairs, Annual Report (1866), 17.
17. U.S. Board of Indian Commissioners, Annual Report (1871), 432.
18. 23 St. 362, 385 (1885).
19. U.S. Supreme Court, Records & Briefs, “Brief of Joseph Redding,” 8.
20. Ibid., 14.
21. Ibid., 17. In the brief, the term “Courts” is handwritten in the margin as a replacement for the typed word “Government.”
22. Interestingly, Garland was one of the attorneys representing Elias Boudinot and Stand Watie in The Cherokee Tobacco. In that case Garland had argued vigorously that the Cherokees should be exempt from the 1868 Revenue law.
23. U.S. Supreme Court, Records & Briefs, “Brief of A. H. Garland,” 10.
24. Ibid., 10.
25. Ibid., 11.
26. Ibid., 24.
27. Ibid., 27.
28. 118 U.S. 375, 376.
29. 23 St. 362, 385 (1885).
30. U.S. Congressional Record (1885), 935.
31. 118 U.S. 375, 377.
32. Ibid.
33. Ibid., 378.
34. Ibid.
35. Ibid., 379.
36. Ibid., 378–379.
37. F. Cas. 14,495 (C.C. Tenn., 1834).
38. Ibid., 940.
39. Ibid., 939.
40. Ibid., 938.
41. Ibid.
42. Ibid.
43. Ibid., 940.
44. Ibid., 939.
45. Ibid.
46. 118 U.S. 375, 379.
47. F. Cas. 14,495 (C.C. Tenn., 1834), 939.
48. 118 U.S. 375, 379.
49. Ibid.
50. Ibid., 380.
51. Ibid., 383–384.
52. Ibid., 384.
53. Ibid., 384–385.
54. Daniel L. Rotenberg, “American Indian Tribal Death—A Centennial Remembrance,” University of Miami Law Review 41 (Dec. 1986): 87.
55. Vine Deloria Jr., “Beyond the Pale: American Indians and the Constitution,” in Jules Lobel, ed., A Less Than Perfect Union (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1988), 261.
56. Nell Jessup Newton, “Federal Power Over Indians: Its Sources, Scope, and Limitation,” University of Pennsylvania Law Review 132 (1984): 215.
57. Deloria and Lytle, American Indians, 171.
58. 31 Fed. 327, 329 (1886).
59. U.S. Commissioner of Indian Affairs, Annual Report (1888), LXXXIX.
60. Vine Deloria Jr., “The Distinctive Status of Indian Rights,” in Peter Iverson, ed., The Plains Indians of the Twentieth Century (Norman, Okla.: University of Oklahoma Press, 1985), 240.
61. Ibid.
62. 24 St. 388 (1887).
63. “Theodore Roosevelt’s First Annual Message, December 3, 1901,” in Fred L. Israel, ed., The State of the Union Messages of the Presidents, 1790–1966. 3 vols. (New York: Chelsea House, 1966), vol. 2, 2047.
64. Janet A. McDonnell, The Dispossession of the American Indian, 1887–1934 (Bloomington, Ind.: Indiana University Press, 1991), 10.
65. U.S. Commissioner of Indian Affairs, Annual Report (1872), 469.
66. “Grover Cleveland’s Annual Message, 1886,” in J. D. Richardson, ed., Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents, 1789–1897 (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1886), 473.
67. Ibid.
68. 30 St. 990–992.
69. 23 St. 73.
70. 135 U.S. 641, 643.
71. U.S. Supreme Court, Records & Briefs, “Transcript of Record,” 2.
72. Ibid.
73. Ibid., 3.
74. 135 U.S. 641, 646.
75. Ibid., 646–647.
76. Ibid., 647.
77. U.S. Supreme Court, Records & Briefs, “Transcript of Record,” 14.
78. Ibid., 15.
79. Angie Debo says that Judge Parker, “who presided over the Fort Smith court from 1875 to 1896, established a record of 172 sentenced to death and 88 actually hanged, nearly all of whom were Indian Territory ‘bad men’” (And Still the Waters Run, 19).
80. U.S. Supreme Court, Records & Briefs, “Transcript of Record,” 22.
81. 33 Fed. Rep., 900, 904 (1888).
82. Ibid., 908.
83. 135 U.S. 641, 651.
84. Ibid., 651–652.
85. Ibid., 652.
86. 31 U.S. (6 Pet.) 515, 582 (1832).
87. 5 Wall. 737 (1867).
88. 175 U.S. 1, 11 (1899).
89. 135 U.S. 641, 653.
90. U.S. Supreme Court, Records & Briefs, “Brief for the Appellant Statement,” 2.
91. Ibid.
92. Ibid., 16–17.
93. Ibid., 19–20.
94. Ibid., 20.
95. 135 U.S. 641, 653.
96. Ibid.
97. Ibid., 654.
98. Ibid.
99. Ibid., 655–656.
100. Ibid., 656–657.
101. Ibid., 657.
102. Ibid.
103. Ibid.
104. Cohen, Handbook of Federal Indian Law, 287–288.
105. U.S. House, Committee of the Whole House, Protection of American Bison and Other Animals, House Report No. 1876, 51st Cong., 1st sess. (1890), 1.
106. Theoretically, trusteeship is a relationship which limits the property rights of the trustee and makes the trustee the servant of the trust beneficiary—in this case, the Shoshone-Bannock Tribe. See especial
ly Felix S. Cohen’s excellent article, “Indian Wardship: the Twilight of a Myth,” in Lucy Cohen, ed., The Legal Conscience: Selected Papers of Felix S. Cohen (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1960), 328–334, in which the author contrasts the very different legal meanings of trustee-beneficiary (the actual relationship between tribes and the United States) and guardian-wardship (the perceived relationship between the two).
107. 15 St. 673.
108. 163 U.S. 504, 506.
109. U.S. Commissioner of Indian Affairs, Annual Report (1894), 67.
110. Ibid.
111. U.S. Commissioner of Indian Affairs, Annual Report (1895), 62.
112. U.S. Commissioner of Indian Affairs, Annual Report (1894), 67.
113. Ibid.
114. U.S. Commissioner of Indian Affairs, Annual Report (1895), 60; and U.S. Board of Indian Commissioners, Annual Report (1896), 991.
115. U.S. Commissioner of Indian Affairs, Annual Report (1895), 67.
116. Ibid., 70.
117. Ibid., 73.
118. Ibid., 80.
119. U.S. Commissioner of Indian Affairs, Annual Report (1896), 57.
120. Ibid., 58.
121. Ibid., 58–59.
122. Ibid.
123. Ibid.
124. 70 Fed. 598 (1895).
125. Ibid.
126. Ibid., 606.
127. Ibid., 608–609.
128. Ibid., 608.
129. Ibid., 613.
130. U.S. Commissioner of Indian Affairs, Annual Report (1896), 60.
131. Ibid.
132. U.S. Congressional Record (1896), 1290–1291. This bill was not enacted. Nevertheless, I believe its introduction points to collusion between the Bureau of Indian Affairs, motivated by paternalism and assimilation, and the state’s political representatives and administrative officers, motivated by their desire for unquestioned jurisdictional authority over all the land in the state. Additional evidence is found in a House Report in which the Committee on Indian Affairs predicted that the Indians, armed with their district court victory, would “naturally be arrogant and insolent in their intercourse with the settlers” (see U.S. House, Committee of the Whole House, “Rights of Certain Indians to Hunt on Unoccupied Public Domain,” Report No. 206, 54th Cong., 1st sess. [January 3, 1896], 1–2).
133. 163 U.S. 504, 505.
134. Ibid., 507.
135. Ibid., 506.
136. Ibid., 507–508.
137. Ibid., 508.
138. Ibid., 509.
139. Ibid.
140. Ibid.
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