The Curtailment of Treaty Rights
With the establishment of permanent reservations in 1854, non-Indians increasingly perceived that Indians would tend to focus their activities within reservation boundaries, even though Indians continued to hunt and fish throughout the ceded territories. The larger issue, state jurisdiction over Indians on and off the reservation, continued to be debated in the Wisconsin legislature. A state Supreme Court ruling in 1879 attempted to settle the issue by declaring that Indians, wherever they may be in Wisconsin, were subject to state law. This was successfully contested in 1901 when U. S. District Court judge Romanzo Bunn ruled that the U. S. Congress held exclusive jurisdiction over Indian reservations through the "major crimes act" of 1885. Nevertheless, officials of the Wisconsin DNR continued to arrest and prosecute Indians on and off the reservations for infractions of the state fish and game laws. The result was a steady erosion of Indian access to off-reservation fish and game that persisted in spite of court agreement in the 1930s and 1940s that the treaties of 1837, 1842, and 1854 protected Indians' hunting and fishing in ceded territories off the reservations. Enactment of Public Law 280 in 1953 extended state jurisdiction over Indian matters not affecting treaty rights, and this resurrected state enforcement agencies' resolve to enforce state hunting and fishing regulations over Indians both on- and off-reservation.
Date created: June, 2002
Last modified: April, 2008
Copyright ©2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008
George R. Spangler