United States v. Winans

United States v. Winans, 198 U.S. 371 (1905), was a U.S. Supreme Court case that held that the Treaty with the Yakima of 1855, negotiated and signed at the Walla Walla Council of 1855, as well as treaties similar to it, protected the Indians' rights to fishing, hunting and other privileges.

Background

In 1854 and 1855, the United States entered into a series of treaties with many of the Indian tribes of the Pacific Northwest. In exchange for Indian interest in certain lands in what is today the State of Washington, the Indians reserved relatively small parcels of land for their exclusive use (hence the term "reservation"), were given compensation in monetary payments, and other guarantees. The Treaty with the Yakima, signed on June 9, 1855, guaranteed to the Yakama "the right of taking fish at all usual and accustomed places in common with the citizens of the Territory".

In the 1890s, Lineas and Audubon Winans operated a state-licensed fishing operation on homesteaded land near Celilo Falls. Celilo Falls, in the Columbia River Gorge, was essential to the fishing practices of the Umatilla, Yakama and Nez Perce tribes. The Winans brothers obtained a license from the State of Washington to operate a fish wheel, a device that could catch salmon by the ton, thus depleting the Yakamas' fish supply. Most importantly for this case, the Winans brothers' actions also forcibly prevented the Yakama Indians from crossing the land recently purchased by the brothers, blocking their passage to the traditional fishing grounds of the tribe.

The legal dispute revolved around the treaty language that secured to the Indians "the right of taking fish at all usual and accustomed places in common with the citizens of the territory", Yakima Treaty of 1855, art.