Cite as: 515 U. S. 450 (1995)
Opinion of Breyer, J.
For one thing, history suggests that the signatories to the Treaty intended the language to provide a broad guarantee that state law would not apply to the Chickasaws if they moved west of the Mississippi River—which they did. The promise's broad reach was meant initially to induce the Choctaws to make such a move in 1830, and it was extended, in 1837, to the Chickasaws for the same reason, all with the hope that other tribes would follow. See A. DeRosier, Removal of the Choctaw Indians 46, 100-128 (1970); id., at 104 (quoting, among other things, President Jackson's statement to Congress, in 1829, that "if the Indians remained east of the Mississippi River, they would be subject to the laws of the several states," but, if they accepted the Treaty and moved west, they would be "free of white men except for a few soldiers").
For another thing, the language of this promise, read broadly and in light of its purpose, fits the tax at issue. The United States promised to secure the "[Chickasaw] Nation from, and against, all laws" for the government of the Nation, except those the Nation made itself or that Congress made. Treaty of Dancing Rabbit Creek, supra (emphasis added). The law in question does not fall within one of the explicit exceptions to this promise. Nor need the Court read the Treaty as creating an additional implied exception where, as here, the law in question likely affects significantly and directly the way in which the Tribe conducts its affairs in areas subject to tribal jurisdiction—how much, for example, it will likely have to pay workers on its land and what kinds of tribal expenditures it consequently will be able to afford. The impact of the tax upon tribal wages, tribal members, and tribal land makes it possible, indeed reasonable, to consider Oklahoma's tax (insofar as it applies to these tribal wages) as amounting to a law "for the government of" the Tribe. Indeed, in 1837, when the United States made its promise to the Chickasaws, the law considered a tax like the present one to be a tax on its source—i. e., the Tribe
469
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