1908

Winters v. United States addresses Indian water rights on reservations.

At the request of the Bureau of Indian Affairs, the Department of Justice files suit in Winters v. United States to protect the water rights of the Indians of the Fort Belknap Reservation in Montana. The 600,000-acre reservation was established in 1888 by a treaty that called for the cession of the rest of the Indians’ homelands to the United States. The treaty also provided the Fort Belknap Indians with money and supplies to help them learn to farm their reduced territory. By the time of the Winters suit, the Indians’ ability to farm the reservation is threatened by a lack of water to irrigate their fields. The reservation is bound by the Milk River, but non-Indians who have settled on the river’s opposite side are drawing much of the available water.

In Winters, the Department of Justice claims that the residents of Fort Belknap have a greater right to the water than the non-Indian settlers. Although the Indians’ treaty with the government did not say so explicitly, the department argues that it implicitly gave them the right to enough water to farm their reservation. The Department of Justice wins the case, which in the future will become the basis for many water-rights claims of reservation populations.

Quick Bear v. Leupp supports federal funding for religious Indian schools.

A Protestant Lakota Sioux living on the Rosebud Reservation in South Dakota, Reuben Quick Bear opposes the federal government’s requirement that reservation students attend a school operated by the Catholic Church. In a case that is eventually argued before the Supreme Court, Quick Bear argues that the government’s funding of the school is a violation of the separation of church and state. The Court disagrees, maintaining that denying funds to the school would violate the rights of Roman Catholics to practice their religion. The decision is a blow to Indian religious freedom and educational choice.

The job of Indian agent is abolished.

To increase the pace of assimilation, Commissioner Francis E. Leupp eliminates the position of Indian agents in the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA). The administrative duties of agents on reservations are to be taken over by teachers and farmers employed by the BIA and referred to as “superintendents.” Leupp maintains that these employees will be better equipped than agents to help Indians adjust to making their living from privately owned allotments.

The “Crime of 1908” allows whites to profit from Indian allotments.

In order to rescind restrictions placed on allotted Indian land, Congress passes legislation that allows for the sale of allotments owned by Indians of mixed ancestry and by Indians married to non-Indians. The law also permits county courts to appoint whites to act as guardians for other Indian allottees. Many of these guardians will charge Indians exorbitantly high fees for managing their lands. In fact, the law will result in so many fraudulent management schemes and dubious land deals that historians will later dub it the “Crime of 1908.”