Cite as: 510 U. S. 399 (1994)
Blackmun, J., dissenting
ted lands to the public domain, but simply opened the lands for settlement.
Nothing in this case suggests that the 1902 Act established a baseline intent to diminish the reservation like that the Court confronted in Rosebud. In that case, an original statute and agreement with the Indians to "cede, surrender, grant, and convey" all their interests in designated lands unequivocally demonstrated a collective intent to diminish the Great Sioux Reservation. See 430 U. S., at 591, n. 8. Both the legislative history of two subsequent allotment statutes and the presence of majority tribal consent to those land allotments established that this original intent to diminish was preserved. All parties agreed that the later statutes "must have diminished [the] reservation if the previous Act did." See Solem, 465 U. S., at 473, n. 15.
By contrast, the 1902 Act contains no equivalent language of diminishment, and none of the Acts at issue here were supported by Indian consent. Prior congressional attempts to open the Uintah Valley Reservation demonstrate that the requirement of the "consent thereto of the majority of the adult male Indians of the Uintah and the White River tribes" was central to the 1902 Act. 32 Stat. 263. In 1894, 1896, 1898, and 1902, Congress enacted statutes requiring Indian consent to open the Uintah Valley Reservation, but none of these Acts became effective because that consent was not forthcoming.13 After the passage of the 1903 Act and the
13 The Indian Appropriations Act of Aug. 15, 1894, ch. 290, § 20, 28 Stat. 337, authorized a commission to allot the Uncompahgre Reservation uni-laterally, but required that the same commission "negotiate and treat" with the Uintah Valley Reservation Indians for the relinquishment of their lands, "and if possible, procure [their] consent" to such allotments. See § 22, ibid. A House Report explained that in contrast to the Uncompahgre Indians, who had "no title to the lands they occupy" and occupied them only temporarily, the Uintah Indians were "the owners of the lands within the reservation, because [the enabling Act] . . . provided that the lands within the Uintah Reservation should be 'set apart for the permanent
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