Mashpee Tribe v. Town of Mashpee
1978 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 18809, 447 F. Supp. 940 (1978)
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Rule of Law:
To have standing to bring a land claim under the Indian Nonintercourse Act, a plaintiff group must prove that it is a currently existing Indian tribe at the time the lawsuit is commenced.
Facts:
- In 1665, land was deeded to a group of Native Americans for the benefit of the 'South Sea Indians' in the area now known as Mashpee, Massachusetts.
- In 1685, the Plymouth Colony granted the land to the South Sea Indians and their children, imposing a restraint on alienation, meaning the land could not be sold to non-Indians without court permission.
- Following the Revolutionary War, in which many Mashpee men were killed, a significant number of non-Indian men (mostly black, but also some white) moved to the area and intermarried with the Indian population.
- In 1834 and 1842, the Massachusetts legislature passed acts organizing the area as the District of Mashpee and authorizing the partition of common lands into individually held plots for the proprietors, though still with some sale restrictions.
- In 1869, the state legislature removed all remaining restraints on the alienation of land held by individual Indians in Mashpee.
- In 1870, the Town of Mashpee was incorporated, and the remaining common lands were transferred to the town and authorized for sale.
- Starting in the 1950s, increased development on Cape Cod led many individual Indian landowners in Mashpee to sell their parcels to non-Indian developers.
- In 1974, the Mashpee-Wampanoag Indian Tribal Council, Inc., was formed to represent the Mashpee Indians and secured federal grants and land from the town.
Procedural Posture:
- The Mashpee Tribe filed an action in the U.S. District Court to recover possession of tribal lands.
- The defendants' answer disputed the plaintiff's status as an Indian tribe.
- The court severed the threshold issue of the plaintiff's tribal existence for a separate trial by jury.
- After a forty-day trial, the issue was submitted to the jury via special interrogatories asking if the plaintiff was a tribe on several key dates.
- The jury returned answers finding that the group constituted a tribe in 1834 and 1842, but not in 1790, 1869, 1870, or on August 26, 1976 (the date the suit was filed).
- The defendants subsequently moved for a judgment of dismissal on the merits based on the jury's answers.
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Issue:
Does a group seeking to recover possession of land under the Indian Nonintercourse Act have standing to sue if a jury determines it was not an Indian tribe at the time the lawsuit was filed?
Opinions:
Majority - Skinner, District Judge
No. A group does not have standing to sue for recovery of land under the Indian Nonintercourse Act if it fails to establish that it was an Indian tribe on the date the action was commenced. The court held that the jury's finding that the Mashpee Tribe was not a tribe for the purposes of the Act in 1976 was dispositive. The right to sue under the Act is exclusively a tribal right, and therefore the plaintiff's failure to prove its tribal status at the time of filing suit is fatal to its claim. The court found that the jury's answers to the special interrogatories were not fatally inconsistent and were supported by the evidence. For example, the jury was entitled to find that between 1842 (when it found tribal status existed) and 1869 (when it did not), the group had abandoned its tribal identity in favor of assimilation into the general non-Indian community. Ultimately, because the jury's finding for 1976 was supported by the evidence, the case must be dismissed.
Analysis:
This decision illustrates the significant evidentiary hurdles faced by non-federally recognized Indian groups, particularly in the eastern United States, when bringing land claims under the Nonintercourse Act. It establishes that tribal status is not a permanent, historical artifact but a fluid political and social identity that can be abandoned through assimilation. The case sets a precedent that plaintiffs bear the heavy burden of proving continuous tribal existence up to the date a lawsuit is filed, making it difficult for groups with gaps in their political history or periods of cultural assimilation to succeed. This ruling significantly narrowed the path for similar historical land claims by requiring a demonstration of a currently functioning and organized tribal entity.
