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Winters v. United States

207 U.S. 564 · 1908 · Supreme Court of the United States

Holding

When the United States created the Fort Belknap Indian Reservation by the agreement of May 1, 1888, it impliedly reserved enough water from the Milk River to fulfill the reservation's purposes, including irrigation of its arid lands. Montana's later admission to the Union and settlers' subsequent state-law appropriations could not defeat that reserved right.

"the power to reserve waters of a river flowing through a territory" — Syllabus, Winters v. United States, 207 U.S. 564 (1908)

Why it matters for settlements

Origin of the federal reserved water rights (Winters) doctrine: tribal water rights arise by implication from the creation of the reservation itself, with a priority date as of its establishment.

Read the primary record (courtlistener.com)

Decided 1908-01-06. CourtListener's HTML opinion page is behind a bot-verification interstitial this session (HTTP 202); the URL is the canonical path returned by CourtListener's own search API, which was fetched successfully.

Sources

CourtListener search API (citation, date, court, canonical URL) (courtlistener.com, retrieved 2026-09-01)
Justia (syllabus and opinion text; cross-check) (supreme.justia.com, retrieved 2026-09-01)