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than in the language of Mr. Justice Matthews, in delivering the opinion of the court in the case of the Choctaw Nation v. The United States ( 119 U. S. i ), where a claim of that tribe under the treaty of 1830 and subsequent dealings, which had been disallowed by the Court of Claims, was brought before the Supreme Court by appeal, and there sustained. He says : —
"The United States is a sovereign nation, not suable in any court except by its own consent, and upon such terms and con- ditions as may accompany that consent, and is not subject to any municipal law. Its government is limited only by its own Consti- tution, and the nation is subject to no law but the law of nations. On the other hand, the Choctaw Nation falls within the description in the terms of our Constitution, not of an independent state or sovereign nation, but of an Indian tribe. As such, it stands in a peculiar relation to the United States. It was capable under the terms of the Constitution of entering into treaty relations with the government of the United States, although, from the nature of the case, subject to the power and authority of the laws of the United States when Congress should choose, as it did determine in the act of March 3, 1871, embodied in section 2079 of the Revised Statutes, to exert its legislative powers.
" As was said by this court recently in the case of the United States against Kagama ( 118 U.S. 375, 383 ) : ' These Indian tribes are the wards of the nation ; they are communities dependent on the United States ; dependent largely for their daily food ; depend- ent for their political rights. They owe no allegiance to the States, and receive from them no protection ; because of the local ill-feeling, the people of the States where they are found are often their deadliest enemies. From their very weakness and helpless- ness, so largely due to the course of dealing of the Federal Govern- ment with them, and the treaties in which it has been promised, there arises the duty of protection, and with it the power. This has always been recognized by the Executive, by Congress, and by this court, whenever the question has arisen.'
" It had accordingly been said in the case of Worcester v. The State of Georgia (6 Peters, 582 ) : *The language used in treaties with the Indians should never be construed to their prejudice. If words be made use of which are susceptible of a more extended meaning than their plain import as connected with the tenor of the treaty, they should be considered as used only in the latter
