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2 to assert the hunting right that the Court addresses. Thus, the Court’s decision to plow ahead on the treatyinterpretation issue is hard to understand, and its discourse on that issue is likely, in the end, to be so much wasted ink.

As the Court notes, the Crow Indians eventually settled in what is now Montana, where they subsequently came into contact with early white explorers and trappers. F. Hoxie, The Crow 26–28, 33 (1989). In an effort to promote peace between Indians and white settlers and to mitigate conflicts between different tribes, the United States negotiated treaties that marked out a territory for each tribe to use as a hunting district. See 2 C. Kappler, Indian Affairs: Laws and Treaties 594 (2d ed. 1904) (Kappler). The Treaty of Fort Laramie of 1851 (1851 Treaty), 11 Stat. 749, created such a hunting district for the Crow.

As white settlement increased, the United States entered into a series of treaties establishing reservations for the Crow and neighboring tribes, and the 1868 Treaty was one such treaty. 15 Stat. 649; Kappler 1008. It set out an 8-million-acre reservation for the Crow Tribe but required the Tribe to cede ownership of all land outside this reservation, including 30 million acres that lay within the hunting district defined by the 1851 Treaty. Under this treaty, however, the Crow kept certain enumerated rights with respect to the use of those lands, and among these was “the right to hunt on the unoccupied lands of the United States so long as game may be found thereon, and as long as peace subsists among the whites and Indians on the borders of the hunting districts.” 1868 Treaty, Art. IV, 15 Stat. 650.

Shortly after the signing of the 1868 Treaty, Congress created the Wyoming Territory, which was adjacent to and