Colville Confederated Tribes v. Walton
United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit
752 F.2d 397 (9th Cir. 1985)
Individual allotments of the Colville Indian Reservation, created under the General Allotment Act, passed both to Indian allottees' heirs and to private non-Indian successors including the Waltons (defendants); in prior litigation the Ninth Circuit held all parties were entitled to water rights proportional to the irrigable land they owned, and on remand the district court awarded the Waltons water rights based on 104 acres they had exercised reasonable diligence in irrigating, without considering whether prior owners had historically irrigated that same amount. The Colville Confederated Tribes (plaintiff) appealed the amount awarded to the Waltons.
Whether non-Indian successors of reservation land are entitled to only as much water as has reasonably and historically been used to irrigate and maintain the land.