Page:Herrera v. Wyoming, 587 U. S. (2019) (slip opinion).pdf/23

20 ary of Law 725 (1889) (defining “occupy” as “[t]o hold in possession; to hold or keep for use” and noting that the word “[i]mplies actual use, possession or cultivation by a particular person”); id., at 944 (defining “settle” as “[t]o establish one’s self upon; to occupy, reside upon”).

Historical evidence confirms this reading of the word “unoccupied.” At the treaty negotiations, Commissioner Taylor commented that “settlements ha[d] been made upon [Crow Tribe] lands” and that “white people [were] rapidly increasing and. . . occupying all the valuable lands.” Proceedings 86. It was against this backdrop of white settlement that the United States proposed to buy “the right to use and settle” the ceded lands, retaining for the Tribe the right to hunt. Ibid. A few years after the 1868 Treaty signing, a leader of the Board of Indian Commissioners confirmed the connection between occupation and settlement, explaining that the 1868 Treaty permitted the Crow Tribe to hunt in an area “as long as there are any buffalo, and as long as the white men are not [in that area] with farms.” Dept. of Interior, Ann. Rep. of the Comm’r of Indian Affairs 500.

Given the tie between the term “unoccupied” and a lack of non-Indian settlement, it is clear that President Cleveland’s proclamation creating Bighorn National Forest did not “occupy” that area within the treaty’s meaning. To the contrary, the President “reserved” the lands “from entry or settlement.” Presidential Proclamation No. 30, 29 Stat. 909. The proclamation gave “[w]arning. . . to all persons not to enter or make settlement upon the tract of land reserved by th[e] proclamation.” Id., at 910. If anything, this reservation made Bighorn National Forest more hospitable, not less, to the Crow Tribe’s exercise of the 1868 Treaty right.

Wyoming’s counterarguments are unavailing. The State first asserts that the forest became occupied through the Federal Government’s “exercise of dominion and control”