Page:Herrera v. Wyoming, 587 U. S. (2019) (slip opinion).pdf/28

Rh immediately south of the Crow Tribe’s reservation. The Act creating the Territory provided that “nothing in this act shall be construed to impair the rights of person or property now pertaining to the Indians in said Territory, so long as such rights shall remain unextinguished by treaty between the United States and such Indians.” Act of July 25, 1868, ch. 235, 15 Stat. 178. Twenty-two years later, Congress admitted Wyoming as a State “on an equal footing with the original States in all respects whatever.” Act of July 10, 1890, ch. 664, 26 Stat. 222. The following year, Congress passed an Act empowering the President to “set apart and reserve” tracts of public lands owned by the United States as forest reservations. Act of Mar. 3, 1891, ch. 561, §24, 26 Stat. 1103. Exercising that authority, President Cleveland designated some lands in Wyoming that remained under federal ownership as a forest reservation. Presidential Proclamation No. 30, 29 Stat. 909. Today, those lands make up the Bighorn National Forest. Bighorn abuts the Crow Reservation along the border between Wyoming and Montana and includes land that was previously part of the Crow Tribe’s hunting district.

These enactments did not end legal conflicts between the white settlers and Indians. Almost immediately after Wyoming’s admission to the Union, this Court had to determine the extent of the State’s regulatory power in light of a tribe’s reserved hunting rights. A member of the Shoshone-Bannock Tribes named Race Horse had been arrested by Wyoming officials for taking elk in violation of state hunting laws. Race Horse, supra, at 506. The Shoshone-Bannock Tribes, like the Crow, had accepted a reservation while retaining the right to hunt in the lands previously within their hunting district. Their treaty reserves the same right, using the same language, as the Crow Tribe’s treaty. Race Horse argued that he had the