## Facts

- The United States created the Crow Indian Reservation by treaty in 1868 to serve as the tribe’s permanent home and contemplated individual farming on selected parcels.
- The treaty did not expressly allocate water, but the reservation lands were arid and cultivable only with irrigation.
- Federal allotment policies later divided some reservation lands into individual allotments, which eventually passed into fee simple ownership.
- Respondents were non-Indian fee owners of tracts within the Crow Reservation derived from former Indian allotments.
- Respondents constructed and used dams and ditches to divert water from non-navigable streams entirely within the reservation (Lodge Grass Creek and the Little Big Horn River, including tributaries) to irrigate their lands.
- The United States, acting on its own behalf and as guardian for the Crow Tribe, sued in federal court seeking a permanent injunction to stop respondents from diverting any water from those streams.
- The district court dismissed the suit, and the court of appeals affirmed.

## Issues

1. Whether the 1868 treaty impliedly reserved reservation waters solely for the tribe as a collective, excluding individual allottees and their successors.
2. Whether non-Indian fee owners of former allotments may use reservation waters necessary to cultivate those lands despite the government’s request for an injunction.

## Decision

- The Supreme Court affirmed the decree dismissing the United States’ bill for an injunction.
- The Court held that the treaty impliedly reserved sufficient water within the reservation to serve the reservation’s purposes, consistent with the rule recognizing implied reserved rights in arid regions.
- The Court further held that individual allottees and their grantees, including non-Indian successors, share in the reserved water right to the extent necessary for cultivation of allotted lands.
- Later federal statutes and Interior Department irrigation planning did not show an intent to deny former allotments access to water needed for farming.

## Legal Principles

- When the United States establishes an Indian reservation in an arid region for permanent settlement and agriculture, it impliedly reserves sufficient water to fulfill those purposes even if the treaty is silent on water.
- Reserved water rights created for the reservation’s purposes extend to individual allotments made for farming, and may pass to successors in interest where necessary to irrigate and cultivate the land.
- Subsequent statutes and administrative actions concerning irrigation and allotment should be construed consistently with the reservation treaty’s purposes absent clear congressional intent to curtail access to essential water.

## Conclusion

The Court upheld dismissal of the government’s injunction suit because the reservation’s impliedly reserved water right included use by allottees and their fee-simple successors to irrigate former allotments, and later legislation and irrigation planning did not negate that entitlement to water necessary for cultivation.


United States v. Powers, 305 U.S. 527 (1939)