Choctaw Nation v. Oklahoma

While I join the Court’s opinion, I add a few words.

The Cherokees, pursuant to treaties with the United States, exchanged their aboriginal domain in the East for more than 14,000,000 acres of land west of the Mississippi, then in Indian Territory but now a part of Oklahoma. Pursuant to promises in the treaties, the United States on December 31, 1838, issued a patent to the Cherokees describing the lands by metes and bounds and conveying the lands here in question in fee simple.1

A portion of the Arkansas River is entirely within the grant to the Cherokees. It is therefore a mystery why all of…