264
Opinion of the Court
cumberable, it also rendered them subject to assessment and forced sale for taxes.
The Burke Act proviso, enacted in 1906, made this implication of § 5 explicit, and its nature more clear. As we have explained, the purpose of the Burke Act was to change the outcome of our decision in In re Heff, 197 U. S. 488 (1905), so that § 6's general grant of civil and criminal jurisdiction over Indian allottees would not be effective until the 25-year trust period expired and patents were issued in fee. The proviso, however, enabled the Secretary of the Interior to issue fee patents to certain allottees before expiration of the trust period. Although such a fee patent would not subject its Indian owner to plenary state jurisdiction, fee ownership would free the land of "all restrictions as to sale, incumbrance, or taxation." 25 U. S. C. § 349. In other words, the proviso reaffirmed for such "prematurely" patented land what § 5 of the General Allotment Act implied with respect to patented land generally: subjection to state real estate taxes.4 And when Congress, in 1934, while putting an end to further allotment of reservation land, see 25 U. S. C. § 461, chose not to return allotted land to pre-General Allotment Act status, leaving it fully alienable by the allottees, their heirs, and assigns, see Brendale, 492 U. S., at 423 (plurality opinion); Hodel v. Irving, 481 U. S. 704, 708-709 (1987), it chose not to terminate state taxation upon those lands as well.
The Yakima Nation and the United States deplore what they consider the impracticable, Moe-condemned "checkerboard" effect produced by Yakima County's assertion of ju-4 Since the proviso is nothing more than an acknowledgment (and clarification) of the operation of § 5 with respect to all fee-patented land, it is inconsequential that the trial record does not reflect "which (if any) of the parcels owned in fee by the Yakima Nation or individual members originally passed into fee status pursuant to the proviso, rather than at the expiration of the trust period . . . ." Brief for United States as Amicus Curiae 13, n. 10.
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