State v. Campbell
| Decision Date | 01 June 1893 |
| Citation | 55 N.W. 553,53 Minn. 354 |
| Parties | State of Minnesota v. Mary Campbell et al |
| Court | Minnesota Supreme Court |
Argued May 16, 1893.
Questions of law which arose January 29, 1892, on the trial of defendants, Mary Campbell and John Belonge, and were certified here by the District Court of Becker County, Ira B Mills, J.
Defendants were indicted for the crime of adultery committed upon the White Earth Indian Reservation in Becker county, and were tried and found guilty. They moved in arrest of judgment, but were overruled. The defendant John Belonge was a Chippewa Indian living on the Reservation under the charge of an agent of the Federal government, and receiving an annuity. The defendant Mary Campbell was a half-breed, the child of a Chippewa Indian mother. She married James Campbell, a white man, in 1889, and lived with him as his wife outside the Reservation until the Spring of 1891, when she deserted him and went to her mother on the Reservation, and in the Fall went to live with Belonge. The questions certified here under 1878 G. S. ch. 117, § 11, were whether or not these persons were subject to the jurisdiction of the state courts.
The Attorney General and J. F. Irish, County Attorney, for the State.
No appearance for defendants.
The defendants were indicted, tried and convicted, in the district court of Becker county, of the crime of adultery committed within the limits of the White Earth reservation in that county, which had been set apart by the United States for the residence of a tribe of Indians which still retained their tribal organization, and were under the care and supervision of the federal government. Belonge was an Indian belonging to this tribe, who retained his tribal relations, and lived on the reservation under the charge of a government agent, and as such received annuities from the United States. Campbell was a half-blood, being the child (legitimate, as we must presume) of a white father and an Indian mother, who did not sustain any tribal relations, but lived with her husband on a farm in Pine county, where the defendant Campbell was raised, and where she was married to a white man, with whom she resided in the same county until shortly before the commission of the alleged offense, when she left him, and went to the White Earth agency, where she has drawn one annuity from the United States as an Indian.
The question which the court below certifies to this court is, in brief, whether, under this state of facts, the defendants, or either of them, are subject to the jurisdiction of the criminal laws of this state.
This reservation was not excepted from the general jurisdiction of the laws of the state by the act admitting the state into the Union, and our attention has not been called to any existing treaty between the United States and this tribe of Indians excepting this reservation from the jurisdiction of the state. And we take it as well settled that, when not restricted by treaty with the Indian tribe, or by the act admitting a state into the Union, the jurisdiction of the state extends over the territorial limits of an Indian reservation so as to apply to all persons therein not tribal Indians under the care of the United States.
As it is evident from the facts stated that Campbell is not a "tribal Indian," we have no doubt that she is just as amenable to the criminal laws of the state for an offense committed on the reservation as she would have been had the offense been committed anywhere else in the state.
The case of the defendant Belonge is different.
It presents just this question: When not expressly restricted or prohibited by an existing treaty with the Indian tribes, or by the act admitting a state into the Union, do the criminal laws of the state (except so far as restricted by the constitutional authority of congress to regulate commerce with the Indian tribes) extend and apply to tribal Indians living under the charge of the general government on a reservation set apart by the United States for that purpose, so as to make them amenable to such laws for crimes committed within the territorial limits of the reservation?
The condition and status of the Indian tribes within the United States, their relations to the federal government, or to the states within whose territorial limits they happen to reside, are subjects which have given rise to much discussion in the courts, both state and federal, from a very early date. Their condition in relation to the United States is unlike that of any other two peoples. They are neither foreign nor independent nations, nor yet citizens of either the United States or of the states in which they reside.
Perhaps the best statement of their position is to be found in the opinions of Chief Justice Marshall in Cherokee Nation v. State of Georgia, 5 Pet. 1, and Worcester v. State of Georgia, 6 Pet. 515. Stated briefly it is, that as long as they retain their tribal relations, they are domestic, dependent communities, under the guardianship and protection of the general government.
While an Indian tribe resides in a territory, the ownership of the country and the right of exclusive sovereignty over it which exists in the general government would, of itself, give congress the right to legislate for the Indians as well as all other persons residing therein.
And if this was the only source of such right, it would doubtless follow, as held in some cases, that, in the absence of a treaty or something in the act admitting the state into the Union restricting it, this jurisdiction would pass to the state, and thereafter the general government would have no power to legislate for the Indian tribes, except to "regulate commerce" with them. There are some decisions of state courts that go to this length, but with one exception, they are all early decisions of southern states, within whose territorial limits the Cherokees and other southern tribes then resided, and were undoubtedly largely influenced by the intense local feeling existing on the subject at that time in those states. See ...
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