198
Opinion of the Court
See also id., at 304 (statement of Hole-in-the-Day, the principal negotiator for the Chippewa: "Your words strike us in this way. They are very short. 'I want to buy your land.' These words are very expressive—very curt").
Like the authorizing legislation, the Treaty Journal, recording the course of the negotiations themselves, is silent with respect to usufructuary rights. The journal records no discussion of the 1837 Treaty, of hunting, fishing, and gathering rights, or of the abrogation of those rights. Id., at 297-356. This silence suggests that the Chippewa did not understand the proposed Treaty to abrogate their usufructuary rights as guaranteed by other treaties. It is difficult to believe that in 1855, the Chippewa would have agreed to relinquish the usufructuary rights they had fought to preserve in 1837 without at least a passing word about the relinquishment.
After the Treaty was signed, President Pierce submitted it to the Senate for ratification, along with an accompanying memorandum from Commissioner Manypenny describing the Treaty he had just negotiated. Like the Treaty and the Treaty Journal, this report is silent about hunting, fishing, and gathering rights. Id., at 290-294 (message of the President of the United States communicating a treaty made with the Mississippi, the Pillager, and the Lake Winnibigoshish Bands of Chippewa Indians).
Commissioner Manypenny's memorandum on the 1855 Treaty is illuminating not only for what it did not say, but also for what it did say: The report suggests a purpose for the second sentence of Article 1. According to the Commissioner's report, the Treaty provided for the purchase of between 11 and 14 million acres of Chippewa land within the boundaries defined by the first article. In addition to this defined tract of land, the Commissioner continued, "those Indians (and especially the Pillager and Lake Winnibigoshish bands) have some right of interest in a large extent of other lands in common with other Indians in Minnesota, and which
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