Cite as: 530 U. S. 392 (2000)
Opinion of the Court
trict Court by the States and state agencies. Metropolitan Water Dist. of S. Cal. v. United States, 830 F. 2d 139 (1987). We granted certiorari and affirmed the Ninth Circuit's judgment by an equally divided Court. California v. United States, 490 U. S. 920 (1989) (per curiam).
The dismissal of the District Court action dispelled any expectation that a "final determination" of reservation boundaries would occur in that forum. The State parties then moved to reopen the 1964 decree, asking the Court to determine whether the Fort Yuma Indian Reservation and two other reservations were entitled to claim additional boundary lands and, if so, additional water rights. Neither the United States nor the Tribes objected to the reopening of the decree, and the Court granted the motion. Arizona v. California, 493 U. S. 886 (1989). After the death in 1990 of the third Special Master, Robert McKay, the Court appointed Frank J. McGarr as Special Master. Special Master McGarr has now filed a report and recommendation (McGarr Report), a full understanding of which requires a discussion of issues and events specific to the Fort Yuma Indian Reservation. We now turn to those issues and events.
II
The specific dispute before us has its roots in an 1884 Executive Order signed by President Chester A. Arthur, designating approximately 72 square miles of land along the Colorado River in California as the Fort Yuma Indian Reservation (Reservation) for the benefit of the Quechan Tribe. The Tribe, which had traditionally engaged in farming, offered to cede its rights to a portion of the Reservation to the United States in exchange for allotments of irrigated land to individual Indians. In 1893, the Secretary of the Interior concluded an agreement with the Tribe (1893 Agreement), which Congress ratified in 1894. The 1893 Agreement provided for the Tribe's cession of a 25,000-acre tract of boundary lands on the Reservation. Language in the agreement,
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