A Drink on Ceded Land

A white man sold intoxicating liquor on his own premises in a small town in South Dakota. The town, an organised municipality, stood on land that an Indian tribe had ceded to the United States; the lots were privately owned, and none of the town's inhabitants was an Indian. The cession agreement, ratified by Congress, provided that no intoxicating liquor should ever be sold or given away on any of the ceded lands, and Congress made violations punishable by fine and imprisonment. He was prosecuted in federal court under that prohibition. The defence argued that once the land lay within a state and in private hands, the power to regulate liquor sales there belonged exclusively to the state, and that any federal power was limited to what was reasonably needed to protect the Indians on the lands they had kept.