INDIAN RESERVATIONS, 93 



the course of dealing of the Federal Government with them, and the treaties in 

 which it has heen promised, there arises the duty of protection, and with it the 

 power. This has always been recognized by the Executive and by Congress, and by 

 this court, whenever the question has arisen. The power of tlie General Government 

 over these remnants of a race once powerful, now weak and diminished in numbers, 

 is necessary to their protection, as well as to the safety of those among whom they 

 dwell. It must exist in that Government because it never has existed anywhere else, 

 because the theater of its exercise is within the geographical limits of the United 

 States, because it has never been denied, and because it alone can enforce its laws on 

 all the tribes. 



The statement at the outset of this quotation that the '•Indian 

 tribes are the wards of the nation " is the keynote to the question of 

 jurisdiction. In State v. Campbell (53 Minn., 354) the court said: 



The jurisdiction of the Federal Government over these Indian tribes rests, not 

 upon the ownership of and sovereignty over the country in which they reside, but 

 upon the fact that, as the wards of the General Government, they are the subjects 

 of Federal authority within the States as well as within the Territories. 



In general it may be said that while the State laws extend over and 

 may be enforced upon Indian reservations when violated by white 

 people or nontribal Indians, yet State authorities have no power to 

 enforce the laws upon the tribal Indian on his reservation. The U. S. 

 district court of Wisconsin has said, 'Congress having assumed juris- 

 diction to punish for criminal offenses, that jurisdiction is exclusive.'^ 

 It adds that while Congress might provide lish and game laws for 

 Indians, it has not done so, and adds that it would be intolerable if the 

 State should have power to step in and extend its civil and criminal 

 codes and police power over these people.* Covering this same point, 

 the Minnesota supreme court, in deciding the case of State v. Camp- 

 bell, said: 



By the act of 1885 presumably Congress has enumerated all the acts which, in their 

 judgment, (jught to be made crimes when committed by Indians, in view of their 

 imperfect civilization. For the State to be allowed to supplement this by making 

 every act a crime on their part which would be such if committed by a member of 

 our more highly civilized society would be not only inappropriate, but also practi- 

 cally to arrogate the guardianship over those Indians, which is exclusively vested in 

 the General Government. 



The jurisdiction of the United States over the Indians on a reserva- 

 tion remains, even though the lands have been allotted in severalty, 

 the title of the reservation still remaining in the United States.^ 



In 1899 the board of game and fish commissioners of Minnesota 

 brouglit an action of replevin for the meat of 14 deer found in posses- 

 sion of an Indian on the AVhite Earth Reservation after the expiration 

 of the time during which the State law permitted the possession of 



«In re Blackbird, 109 Fed., 139. 



&ln re Blackbird, supra. 



cin re Lincoln, 129 Fed., 247 (Calif., 1904). 



