DeCoteau v. District County Court for the Tenth Judicial District

These two cases, consolidated for decision, raise the single question whether the Lake Traverse Indian Reservation in South Dakota, created by an 1867 treaty between the United States and the Sisseton and Wahpeton bands of Sioux Indians, was terminated and returned to *427the public domain, by the Act of March 3, 1891, c. 543, 26 Stat. 1035. In each of the two cases, the South Dakota courts asserted jurisdiction over members of the Sisseton-Wahpeton Tribe for acts done on lands which, though within the 1867 reservation borders, have been owned and settled by non-Indians since the 1891 Act. The…