OCTOBER TERM, 1997
Syllabus
certiorari to the united states court of appeals for the eighth circuit
No. 97-174. Argued February 24, 1998—Decided June 8, 1998
During the late 19th century, the Federal Government instituted a policy of removing portions of reservation land from tribal ownership and federal protection, allotting some parcels to individual Indians in fee simple and providing for other parcels to be sold to non-Indians. Most allotments were implemented pursuant to the General Allotment Act (GAA), which provided that land would be patented to individual Indians and held in trust for 25 years, after which title would be conveyed in fee simple, § 5, and that Indian allottees were subject to plenary state jurisdiction, § 6. The Burke Act amended § 6 to provide that state jurisdiction did not attach until the end of the trust period, and contained a proviso to the effect that the Secretary of the Interior could issue a fee simple patent before the trust period's end and thereafter restrictions as to, inter alia, taxation would be removed. Allotment of the Minnesota reservation lands of respondent Leech Lake Band of Chippewa Indians (Band) was implemented through the Nelson Act of 1889, which provided for the reservation land to be alienated from tribal ownership in three ways: under § 3, parcels were allotted to individual Indians as provided by the GAA; under §§ 4 and 5, pine lands were sold at public auction to non-Indians; and under § 6, agricultural lands were sold to non-Indian settlers as homesteads. After Congress ended the allotment practice, the Band began purchasing back parcels of reservation land that had been allotted to individual Indians or sold to non-Indians. Based on this Court's decision, in County of Yakima v. Confederated Tribes and Bands of Yakima Nation, 502 U. S. 251, 253-254, that a county could assess ad valorem taxes on reservation land owned in fee by individual Indians or the tribe that had originally been made alienable when patented under the GAA, petitioner Cass County began assessing such taxes on 21 parcels of reservation land that had been alienated under the Nelson Act and reacquired by the Band. Thirteen of the parcels had been allotted to Indians and the remaining eight had been sold to non-Indians. The Band paid the taxes, interest, and penalties under protest and filed suit seeking a declaratory judgment that the county could not tax the parcels. The District Court granted the county summary judgment, holding that the parcels were taxable be-
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