Cadillac Desert: The American West and Its Disappearing Water

by Marc Reisner

Before the negotiations were interrupted, the Corps had offered the Indians some scattered property on the Missouri benchlands to replace the bottomlands they would lose. (“I want to show you where we are going to place you people,” a local Congregationalist minister quoted Pick as saying.) Under the law, all compensatory lands were to be “comparable in quality and sufficient in area to compensate the said tribes for the land on the Fort Berthold Reservation.” It was up to the Secretary of the Interior, Cap Krug, to decide whether the criteria had been met. As Krug well knew, there was no land in North Dakota that could adequately compensate the tribes for prime winter cattle range in a river valley. He had decided, therefore, to accede to the Indians’ other demands for water, at-cost hydroelectric power, and first timber and mineral rights. Since even this appeared to be too little, he also agreed to pay them $5,105,625 for the 155,000 acres they would lose. It was only $33 an acre, but it was better than nothing.