United States V. Winans - Background

Background

In 1854 and 1855, the United States entered into a series of treaties with many of the Indian tribes of the Pacific Northwest. In exchange for Indian interest in certain lands in what is today the State of Washington, the Indians reserved relatively small parcels of land for their exclusive use (hence the term "reservation"), were given compensation in monetary payments, and other guarantees. The Treaty with the Yakima, signed on June 9, 1855, guaranteed to the Yakama "the right of taking fish at all usual and accustomed places in common with the citizens of the Territory"

In the 1890s, Lineas and Audubon Winans operated a state-licensed fishing operation on homesteaded land near Celilo Falls. Celilo Falls, in the Columbia River Gorge, was essential to the fishing practices of the Umatilla, Yakama and Nez Perce tribes. The Winans brothers obtained a license from the State of Washington to operate a fish wheel, a device that could catch salmon by the ton, thus depleting the Yakamas' fish supply. Most importantly for this case, the Winans brothers' actions also forcibly prevented the Yakama Indians from crossing the land recently purchased by the brothers, blocking their passage to the traditional fishing grounds of the tribe.

The legal dispute revolved around the treaty language that secured to the Indians "the right of taking fish at all usual and accustomed places in common with the citizens of the territory", Yakima Treaty of 1855, art. 3, ¶ 2, 12 Stat. 951. In 1905, the Supreme Court reaffirmed the off-reservation fishing rights possessed by the Yakama tribe: "The right to resort to the fishing places in controversy was a part of larger rights possessed by the Indians, upon the exercise of which there was not a shadow of impediment, and which were not much less necessary to the existence of the Indians than the atmosphere they breathed." Internationally recognized scholar on Native American issues, including tribal sovereignty, N. Bruce Duthu conveys that, although the arrival of settlers on Indian land called for a modification of rights Indians once possessed exclusively, the elimination of said rights was unlawful. Where Congress has inhibited fishing rights reserved under the treaties, or land or mineral rights (also treaty-reserved rights) are limited by private or government actors, tribes are often awarded monetary relief by the courts. Where private projects have obstructed treaty fishing rights, courts within the Ninth Circuit, however, have refused to pay monetary compensation to the tribes. The Indians brought suit to enjoin the respondents from using the fish wheel. The United States Circuit Court for the District of Washington ruled for the respondents on the basis of their exclusive rights to private property. The Supreme Court reversed.