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000731 Mr. Phil Doe Page 4 June 14, 1998 their aboriginal lands in New Mexico, Utah, and Colorado for a reservation of approximately 15.7 million acres lying wholly within Colorado. The reservation was subsequently almost severed in 1874 by the "Brunot Cession" of 3.7 million acres of the east-central portion of the reservation after valuable mineral deposits were discovered there. The result of the cession was that the Southern Utes were wedged between the southern boundary line of the Brunot Cession and the New Mexico border, at the southernmost part of the reservation on a strip of land 15 miles wide and 110 miles long. That strip is Royce Area 617 (after a map drawn by Charles Royce). The remainder of the Ute reservation after the Brunot Cession is known as "Royce Area 616. " The case which resulted in the 1971 Supreme Court decision was commenced in 1951, when the Southern Ute Tribe brought a claim before the Indian Claims Commission, asserting that the United States had violated its fiduciary duty to the tribe by disposing of the land ceded to it by the Ute tribe as "free homesteads," although obligated by the Acts of 1880 and 1895 to sell the acreage for the tribe's benefit; the tribe also sought an accounting for the proceeds from the sale of 82,000 acres of land, which were, under the same Acts, required to be held for the tribe's benefit. 91 S.Ct. at 1337. The government's defense was ~judicata: that, because the tribe had entered into the consent judgments in the Court of Claims in 1950 between the United States and the Confederated Bands of Utes (which included the Southern Utes), it was barred from bringing the 1951 claims. The 1950 Court of Claims consent judgments gave effect to settlement agreements which, in aggregate, exceeded $31 million. Id. n. 2. These 1950 judgments by their terms constituted: . .. full settlement and payment for the complete extinguishment of plaintiffs' right, title, interest, estate, claims and demands of whatsoever nature in and to the land and property in western Colorado ceded by plaintiffs to defendant by the Act of June 15. 1880 (21 Stat. 199), which (a) the United States sold for cash... (b) disposed of as free homesteads... and (c) set aside for public purposes [between 1910 and 1938] .... [T]he judgment to be entered in this case is res judicata, not only as to the land described in Schedule 1 [which contained the legal descriptions of the lands disposed of as free homesteads and set aside by the U.S. for public purposes], but ... also as to any land formerly owned or claimed by the plaintiffs in western Colorado, ceded to defendant by the Act of June 15. 1880 ... 91 S.Ct. 1337 (emphasis in original; citation omitted). The Supreme Court's inquiry was whe- ther the Utes had either withheld any lands from the 1880 cession, or acquired any lands or interests in land subsequent to the Act of June 15, 1880, which were subsequently ceded, par- 4