Mohegan Tribe v. State of Conn.

• Decision Date: 17 January 1980
• Docket Number: Civil No. H-77-434.
• Parties: MOHEGAN TRIBE v. STATE OF CONNECTICUT.
• Court: U.S. District Court — District of Connecticut

483 F. Supp. 597

MOHEGAN TRIBE v. STATE OF CONNECTICUT.

Civil No. H-77-434.

United States District Court, D. Connecticut.

January 17, 1980.

Jerome M. Griner, West Hartford, Conn., for plaintiff.

Carl Ajello, Atty. Gen., Francis J. MacGregor, Asst. Atty. Gen., Hartford, Conn., for defendant.

David Roseman, Asst. Atty. Gen., Augusta, Maine, for amicus curiae.

RULING ON MOTION TO DISMISS

BLUMENFELD, District Judge.

This is a civil action for possession of land now allegedly owned and used by the State of Connecticut. The plaintiff, the Mohegan Tribe of Indians, claims that certain lands located in the northeast portion of the Town of Montville, Connecticut were "from time immemorial . . . until the defendant's predecessor-in-title . . . purported to claim title to the land, exclusively owned, used, and occupied" by the Mohegans. It further claims that the property was held by the Tribe at the time of the enactment of the first Indian Trade and Intercourse Act in 1790. Act of July 22, 1790, ch. 33, 1 Stat. 137 ("1790 Act"). That Act and its successors provided, in part, that conveyances of Indian land to non-Indians would be invalid unless made by treaty under the authority of the United States.¹ Since the Indians held the land at the time of the Act and since no federal treaty has ever been made with them, they claim that the land is rightfully theirs.

Connecticut has filed a motion to dismiss this action. It bases its motion on a claim that the Trade and Intercourse Acts were not intended to apply to Indian tribes which were located to the east of the "Indian country" borderline. That borderline was defined for the first time in the 1834 enactment of the Trade and Intercourse Act,² but it is conceded that at no time between 1790 and the present have the Mohegans been residents of "Indian country." If, as the State contends, the Nonintercourse statute applied only in Indian country, the case should be dismissed.

The current Nonintercourse statute, 25 U.S.C. § 177, and its predecessors, are all put in issue by the plaintiff's complaint and the defendant's answer. Since each reenactment of the Nonintercourse statute was primarily based on the language of the prior statute, however, the proper starting point for any inquiry lies in the original 1790 Act. It provided in pertinent part that:

"no sale of lands made by any Indians, or any nation or tribe of Indians, within the United States, shall be valid to any person or persons, or to any state, whether having the right of pre-emption to such lands or not, unless the same shall be made and duly executed at some public treaty, held under the authority of the United States."

1790 Act, § 4 (emphasis added). The Act of March 1, 1793, ch. 19, 1 Stat. 329 ("1793 Act"), which supplanted the 1790 Act, provided:

"That no purchase or grant of lands, or of any title or claim thereto, from any Indians, or nation or tribe of Indians, within the bounds of the United States, shall be of any validity in law or equity, unless the same be made by a treaty or convention entered into pursuant to the Constitution: . . . It shall be lawful for the agent or agents of any State . . under the authority of the United States, . . . to propose to, and adjust with the Indians, the compensation to be made for their claims to lands within such State . . .."

1793 Act, § 8 (emphasis added). Because of a section in the 1793 Act which provided that the entire Act was to expire automatically after approximately two years,³ the legislature reenacted the same Act in 1796.⁴ With essentially the same language, the Act was again reenacted in 1799⁵ and 1802.⁶

In 1834, the Nonintercourse statute took on the shape which it has had to the present day.⁷ With only one relevant exception, the language of the section on land conveyances is identical to the language in the corresponding section of the 1793 Act. The only exception is the omission of the words "within the bounds of the United States." These words do not appear in the 1834 Act and since then no geographic limitation whatsoever has replaced them.

In spite of the fact that the Nonintercourse statute was enacted five times with the explicit words "within the United States" and still contains no explicit limitations, the defendant insists that the statute should be read as limited solely to "Indian country." Connecticut bases this claim on the legislative intent and history lying behind the Trade and Intercourse Act and on other sections of the Acts which do contain express geographic limitations.

Resolution of this motion only requires the court to construe the Nonintercourse statute. Arguments over the meaning of this short, three-sentence provision, however, have generated in excess of 300 pages of briefing, extensive research, and elaborate appendices. The arguments advanced by both parties can be grouped into three categories. Some are based on the language of the Acts themselves, some are based on their historical context, and others are based on prior case law. This opinion considers each of these three sets of arguments separately.

The Language of The Act

In a case involving the interpretation of a statute, analysis must begin with the language of the statute itself. Touche Ross & Co. v. Redington, 442 U.S. 560, 568, 99 S.Ct. 2479, 2485, 61 L.Ed.2d 82 (1979). The language of the Trade and Intercourse Acts does not support the defendant's motion. In addition to the explicit references to "within the bounds of the United States" found in the land conveyance section, the language of several other sections in these Acts suggest that their application is not limited to Indian country.

For instance, from 1793 until 1834, every Act contained a "surrounded by settlements" provision.⁸ Under this provision, the terms of the Act were not "to be construed to prevent any trade or intercourse with Indians living on lands surrounded by settlements of the citizens of the United States and being within the ordinary jurisdiction of any of the individual States . . .."⁹ At the time, there were no such surrounded Indians in the area defined as Indian country. If, as the defendant contends, the entire Trade and Intercourse Act was to apply only to Indian country, it would have served no purpose to exempt Indians living outside Indian country. It must be assumed that Congress knew what it was doing when it enacted the Act; this court is not inclined to give the Act an interpretation which will render portions of it meaningless. Reiter v. Sonotone Corp., 442 U.S. 330, 344, 99 S.Ct. 2326, 2333, 60 L.Ed.2d 931 (1979); Colautti v. Franklin, 439 U.S. 379, 392, 99 S.Ct. 675, 58 L.Ed.2d 596 (1979).

Another rule of statutory construction also lends support to the plaintiff's position. In 1802, Congress added section 21 to the Act, which provided:

"That the President of the United States be authorized to take such measures, . . . to prevent or restrain the vending or distributing of spirituous liquors among all or any of the said Indian tribes, . . .." (Emphasis added).¹⁰

In 1822, however, Congress deemed it advisable to amend this section so as to limit its applicability to Indian country:

"That it shall and may be lawful for the President of the United States, in execution of the power vested in him by the twenty-first section of the act of the thirtieth of March, one thousand eight hundred and two, aforesaid, the Trade and Intercourse Act to which this is an amendment, to direct . . . certain persons to cause the stores and packages of goods of all traders to be searched, upon suspicion or information that ardent spirits are carried into the Indian countries by said traders in violation of the twenty-first section of the act to which this is an amendment . . .." (Emphasis added).¹¹

"It is a canon of statutory construction that where as here the words of a later statute differ from those of a previous one on the same or a related subject, the legislature must have intended them to have a different meaning." Klein v. Republic Steel Corporation, 435 F.2d 762, 765-766 (3d Cir. 1970). Thus, it seems unlikely that the 1822 amendment would have been necessary had the 1802 Act been entirely limited to Indian country. On the contrary, the logical conclusion to draw from this amendment is that when Congress wanted to limit the effect of a particular provision it was quite aware of how to do so.

In addition to these provisions, the specific provision concerning land transfer has a clue to its geographic applicability imbedded within it. Under the terms of every Act enacted after 1790, the "agents of States" were allowed to negotiate with Indians (under federal auspices) for claims to lands "within such States."¹² This makes it clear that the Nonintercourse statute was meant to apply within state boundaries. Defendant apparently concedes as much, but it points out that the boundary to Indian country ran through the western parts of some of the original 13 states. Thus, it claims that this proviso was meant to apply to land which was both in Indian country and within the boundaries of states. While this argument sustains the state's position for some of the earlier Acts, the 1834 Act, which contains the same proviso, expressly indicates that Indian country lies only outside of states.¹³ It is therefore logically impossible to conclude both that the Act was meant to apply within the boundaries of a state, a conclusion mandated by the express language of the provision, and that the Act applied only to Indian country, a conclusion drawn by the defendant. This, then, is further strong support for the plaintiff's position.

In opposition to these arguments, the defendant can muster only paltry support from the language of the Act. For instance, it argues that the title of the Act, "Act to Regulate Trade and Intercourse with Indian Tribes and to Preserve Peace on the Frontiers," suggests that the Act was solely designed to govern relations with frontier tribes....