Choctaw Nation v. Oklahoma Cherokee Nation or Tribe of Indians In Oklahoma v. Oklahoma

Decision Date27 April 1970
Docket NumberNos. 41,59,s. 41
Citation25 L.Ed.2d 615,397 U.S. 620,90 S.Ct. 1328
PartiesThe CHOCTAW NATION and the Chickasaw Nation, Petitioners, v. State of OKLAHOMA et al. The CHEROKEE NATION OR TRIBE OF INDIANS IN OKLAHOMA, Petitioner, v. State of OKLAHOMA et al
CourtU.S. Supreme Court

See 398 U.S. 945, 90 S.Ct. 1834.

Lon Kile, Hugo, Okl., and Peyton Ford, Washington, D.C., for petitioners.

G. T. Blackenship, Oklahoma City, Okl., and M. Darwin Kirk, Tulsa, Okl., for respondents.

Louis F. Claiborne, Washington, D.C., for United States, amicus curiae, by special leave of Court.

Mr. Justice MARSHALL delivered the opinion of the Court.

This case involves a dispute over the title to land underlying the navigable portion of parts of the Arkansas River in the State of Oklahoma. As a practical matter, what is at stake is the ownership of the minerals beneath the river bed and of the dry land created by navigation projects that are narrowing and deepening the river channel.

In December 1966, petitioner Cherokee Nation brought suit in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Oklahoma against the State of Oklahoma and various corporations to which the State had leased oil and gas and other mineral rights. In its complaint, the Cherokee Nation sought both to recover the royalties derived from the leases and to prevent future interference with its property rights, claiming that it had been since 1835 the absolute fee owner of certain land below the mean high water level of the Arkansas River. Subsequently, petitioners Choctaw and Chickasaw Nations sought and were granted leave to intervene in the case in order to present their claims that part of the river bed belongs to them.

After pre-trial proceedings in the District Court, a judgment on the pleadings was entered against petitioners and in favor of the State. The District Court held that land grants made to petitioners by the United States conveyed no rights to the bed of the navigable portion of the Arkansas River. The court thus held that title to the river bed remained in the United States until 1907, when it passed to the State upon Oklahoma's admission to the Union. On appeal, the United States Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit affirmed the judgment of the District Court. 402 F.2d 739 (1968). We granted certiorari, Choctaw Nation v. Oklahoma, 394 U.S. 972, 89 S.Ct. 1455, 22 L.Ed.2d 972 (1969), to consider petitioners' claims that they received title to the land in question by treaties with the United States in 1830 and 1835.

I

At the outset, we note that these cases require us to pass upon the effect of treaties that were entered into nearly a century and a half ago. As background, it is necessary briefly to relate the circumstances by which petitioners received large grants of land by treaty from the United States.

The history behind these treaties goes back at least to the period immediately after the Revolutionary War and prior to the adoption of the Constitution—a time when petitioners and other Indian Nations occupied much of what are today the southern and southeastern parts of the United States. In 1785, in the Treaty of Hopewell, November 28, 1785, 7 Stat. 18, the United States entered into a treaty of peace and friendship with the Cherokee Indians which established the boundaries of the Cherokee Nation and in which the Indians acknowledged themselves to be under the protection of the United States. The next year, a similar treaty was concluded between the Choctaws and the United States. Treaty of Hopewell, January 3, 1786, 7 Stat. 21.

In following years, the United States entered into a number of additional treaties with both the Chero- kees and Choctaws.1 By means of these treaties, the United States purchased large areas of land from the Indians to provide room for the increasing numbers of new settlers who were encroaching upon Indian lands during their westward migrations. Although the Indians were not considered to own the fee title to the land on which they lived, they did have the right to the exclusive use and occupancy of the land—a right that could be ceded only to the United States.2 Moreover, the Indians continued to live on the land not ceded under their own laws and way of life, and their rights to those lands were 'solemnly' guaranteed by the United States. Treaty of Holston, July 2, 1791, 7 Stat. 39, 40; see Indian Intercourse Act of 1802, 2 Stat. 139.

Even while it was making this solemn guarantee, however, the United States adopted a policy aimed at completely extinguishing these Indian Nations' rights to their native lands. The United States had acquired a large western territory in 1803 by the Louisiana Purchase, and it was soon proposed that the Indians be relocated on new lands west of the Mississippi.3 For a time, it seemed that the westward removal of the Indians might be readily accomplished. In the Treaty of July 8, 1817, 7 Stat. 156, the Cherokee Nation agreed to trade part of its lands in Georgia for a large amount of land in the Arkansas Territory. See also Treaty of February 27, 1819, 7 Stat. 195. Thereafter, a number of the Cherokees left their eastern lands and traveled west. Three years later, in the Treaty of Doak's Stand, October 18, 1820, 7 Stat. 210, the Choctaw Nation agreed to exchange approximately half of its remaining Mississippi lands for a large tract of land in the Arkansas Territory and an even larger one farther west.

Before the United States could relocate the Indians on these new lands, however, at least part of the land that had been set aside in the Arkansas Territory was already settled. It was apparent that the westward removal had not been aimed far enough west to escape the new nation's expansion. By the Treaty of January 20, 1825, 7 Stat. 234, the Choctaws were persuaded to cede back to the United States the eastern portion of the land given them in the Treaty of Doak's Stand. Similarly, the Cherokees who had voluntarily moved to Arkansas agreed to move again—farther west to a new tract of land, 'a permanent home, and which shall, under the most solemn guarantee of the United States, be, and remain, theirs forever.' Treaty of May 6, 1828, 7 Stat. 311.

The prospect of the voluntary removal of the Indians to land west of the Mississippi soon disappreared. For the most part, the Choctaws and the Cherokees who had not already left their eastern lands refused to give up the land that had long been their home. The abortive attempt to set aside Arkansas Territory land for the Indians justifiably made many of them doubt that the United States would protect them in their new lands. But at the same time the Indians were deciding to remain, the new settlers' expansion and desire for their lands increased. In Georgia, the state legislature, tired of waiting for the United States to fulfill its promise to extinguish Indian rights to Georgia lands,4 asserted jurisdiction over the Cherokees and prepared to distribute the Cherokee lands. Mississippi soon followed suit, abolishing tribal government and extending its laws to Choctaw territory.

A clash between the obligation of the United States to protect Indian property rights on the one hand and the policy of forcing their relinquishment on the other was inevitable. With the passage of the Indian Removal Act of 1830, 4 Stat. 411, it became apparent that policy, not obligation, would prevail. In spite of the promises to protect the Indians' land and sovereignty, it was clear that the United States was unable or unwilling to prevent the States and their citizens from violating Indian rights.

Thus faced with the prospect of losing both their lands and way of life, the Choctaws agreed in 1830 to leave Mississippi and to move to new lands west of the Arkansas Territory. As a guarantee that they would not again be forced to move, the United States promised to convey the land to the Choctaw Nation in fee simple 'to inure to them while they shall exist as a nation and live on it.' In addition, the United States pledged itself to secure to the Choctaws the 'jurisdiction and government of all the persons and property that may be within their limits west, so that no Territory or State shall ever have a right to pass laws for the government of the Choctaw Nation * * * and that no part of the land granted them shall ever be embraced in any Territory or State.' Treaty of Dancing Rabbit Creek, Sept. 27, 1830, 7 Stat. 333—334.

The Cherokees were at first determined to retain the Georgia lands on which they had by that time settled down, establishing farms and towns.5 However, after a time, they, too, were forced to leave. In the Treaty of New Echota, December 29, 1835, 7 Stat. 478, the Cherokees who had remained in the East agreed to leave their lands and to join the Cherokees who had already moved west of the Mississippi. Once again, the United States assured the Indians that they would not be forced to move from their new lands: a patent would issue to convey those lands in fee simple, and they would never be embraced within the boundaries of any State or Territory.

The United States thus succeeded in its efforts to remove the Indians from their eastern lands. In exchange, by the Treaty of Dancing Rabbit Creek with the Choctaws in 1830 and the Treaty of New Echota with the Cherokees in 1835, the United States granted a vast area of its western territory to the two Indian Nations. The land thus granted to the Choctaws encompassed what is today approximately the southern third of the State of Oklahoma; to the north, the Cherokees received title to a tract of land in the eastern part of the remainder of the State with a perpetual outlet to and other rights in land farther west.

Although by later treaties other Indian tribes were settled on parts of the land originally included in these grants, and the Chickasaw Nation was granted an undividued one-fourth interest in the remainder of the Choctaw land, see ...

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