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COUNTY OF YAKIMA v. CONFEDERATED TRIBES AND BANDS OF YAKIMA NATION Opinion of the Court

cated on reservation lands. See, e. g., New York ex rel. Ray v. Martin, 326 U. S. 496 (1946); see also Cohen, Handbook of Federal Indian Law, at 352, and n. 39. We have even observed that state jurisdiction over the relations between reservation Indians and non-Indians may be permitted unless the application of state laws “would interfere with reservation self-government or impair a right granted or reserved by federal law.” Organized Village of Kake, supra, at 75. In the area of state taxation, however, Chief Justice Marshall’s observation that “the power to tax involves the power to destroy,” McCulloch v. Maryland, 4 Wheat. 316, 431 (1819), has counseled a more categorical approach: “[A]bsent cession of jurisdiction or other federal statutes permitting it,” we have held, a State is without power to tax reservation lands and reservation Indians. Mescalero Apache Tribe v. Jones, 411 U. S. 145, 148 (1973). And our cases reveal a consistent practice of declining to find that Congress has authorized state taxation unless it has “made its intention to do so unmistakably clear.” Montana v. Blackfeet Tribe, 471 U. S. 759, 765 (1985); see also California v. Cabazon Band of Mission Indians, 480 U. S. 202, 215, n. 17 (1987). Yakima County persuaded the Court of Appeals, and urges upon us, that express authority for taxation of fee-patented land is found in § 6 of the General Allotment Act, as amended.1 We have little doubt about the accuracy of that threshold assessment. Our decision in Goudy v. Meath, 203 1

Section 6 provides in pertinent part: “At the expiration of the trust period and when the lands have been conveyed to the Indians by patent in fee,. . . then each and every allottee shall have the benefit of and be subject to the laws, both civil and criminal, of the State or Territory in which they may reside. . . . Provided, That the Secretary of the Interior may, in his discretion, and he is authorized, whenever he shall be satisfied that any Indian allottee is competent and capable of managing his or her affairs at any time to cause to be issued to such allottee a patent in fee simple, and thereafter all restrictions as to sale, incumbrance, or taxation of said land shall be removed.” 25 U. S. C. § 349 (emphasis added).