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COUNTY OF YAKIMA v. CONFEDERATED TRIBES AND BANDS OF YAKIMA NATION Opinion of Blackmun, J.

ments, i. e., Pub. L. 280 and the Indian Civil Rights Act of 1968, giving States civil and criminal jurisdiction over reservations but only upon consent of the affected tribe). Rather than rely on the principal clause of § 6, the Court turns to a proviso added by the Burke Act, enacted in 1906.1 Ante, at 264. It acknowledges that the proviso was not even mentioned in Goudy v. Meath, 203 U. S. 146 (1906),2 a case upon which the majority relies. Ante, at 258–259. As an initial matter, the proviso’s attachment to an obsolete principal clause, if anything, must diminish its force as a measure of congressional intent. Moreover, by its terms, the proviso does not remove “restrictions as to . . . taxation” from all allotted land. It removes restrictions solely from allotted land that happened to be patented in fee “prematurely,” i. e., prior to the expiration of the 25-year trust period. To be sure, the proviso could be read to suggest that Congress possibly intended taxation of allotted lands other than those lands patented prematurely.3 But a possibility, or even a likelihood, does not meet this Court’s demanding standard of “unmistakably clear” intent. 1

The proviso states in pertinent part: “[T]he Secretary of the Interior may, in his discretion. . . 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. 2 Goudy relied upon the principal clause of § 6. Even if this principal clause had any continuing vitality, whether Goudy would still be good law is questionable in light of the Court’s more recent decision in Bryan v. Itasca County, 426 U. S. 373 (1976), where it declined to find a clear intent of Congress to allow a State to tax Indians on the basis of a statute, § 4(a) of Pub. L. 280, that on its face conferred upon the State general civil jurisdictional powers over Indian country. 3 This reading, which would imply the taxability of all fee-patented lands regardless of whether the owner was an original allottee, is in some tension with what the majority points out to be the “literal coverage (‘each and every allottee’)” of the principal general-jurisdiction-conferring clause. Ante, at 262.