## Facts

- The Yakama Nation entered the 1855 treaty reserving “the right of taking fish at all usual and accustomed places, in common with citizens,” and the right to erect temporary curing structures.
- The Winans brothers, non-Indians, acquired riverfront and related interests through federal patents and state grants and operated state-licensed fish wheels on the Columbia River.
- The fish wheel operation both reduced available fish and physically impeded Yakama members from reaching and using traditional fishing locations.
- The United States sued on behalf of the Yakama to stop the Winans from obstructing the exercise of treaty-based fishing and access rights.
- A federal circuit court dismissed the suit, treating the treaty right as no greater than the rights of other citizens and as insufficient to limit the Winans’ asserted exclusivity.

## Issues

1. Whether the Yakama treaty language reserving fishing at “all usual and accustomed places in common with citizens” preserves an off-reservation right that includes access to traditional fishing sites.
2. Whether federal and state land grants and state licensing may be exercised to exclude tribal members in a manner that defeats reserved treaty fishing rights.

## Decision

- The Supreme Court reversed the dismissal and remanded.
- The Court held the treaty provision was not a grant to the Yakama but a reservation of preexisting rights not ceded.
- The Court ruled the reserved fishing right burdens the ceded lands as a continuing servitude binding the United States’ and the State’s grantees.
- The Court concluded state-created property interests and licenses cannot be used to exclude Yakama fishers from usual and accustomed places.
- The case was remanded to determine how to reconcile the respondents’ fish wheel operation with protection of the reserved treaty right.

## Legal Principles

- Indian treaties are construed as the tribal signatories would have understood them, with ambiguities resolved to preserve the treaty’s practical guarantees.
- Treaty provisions commonly reserve rights already held by tribes; rights not clearly surrendered are retained.
- Reserved off-reservation fishing at usual and accustomed places includes sufficient access to reach the fishery and make temporary use necessary to exercise the right.
- Later federal and state conveyances are taken subject to treaty-based burdens; private titles and state permissions cannot practically nullify treaty rights.
- Federal treaty obligations are supreme over conflicting state law or state-created rights, including claims based on state sovereignty over submerged lands.

## Conclusion

The Court recognized that the Yakama treaty reserved continuing off-reservation fishing and access rights at usual and accustomed places, imposing a binding burden on later private and state-derived property interests and requiring accommodation rather than exclusion.


United States v. Winans, 198 U.S. 371 (1905)