I yap about Indian water rights, and a quick Google search brings up this:
Martin, Jill E. "Indian Reserved Water Rights (review)
The American Indian Quarterly - Volume 24, Number 4, Fall 2000, pp. 660-662
University of Nebraska Press
Excerpt
In 1908, the United States Supreme Court, in Winters v. United States, found that the Indian tribes on the Fort Belknap reservation in Montana had reserved rights to water. Non-Indian settlers upstream of the reservation had diverted the waters of the Milk River to irrigate their land, under the state law doctrine of prior appropriation. This doctrine, used in many western states, gave the right to use the water to those who first appropriated it to their use. This differed from the law in most eastern states, which provided riparian rights to those landowners whose land abutted the watercourse.
The Assiniboine and Gros Ventre Indians, who resided on the Fort Belknap reservation, had been hunters, not farmers, and had not irrigated the reservation land. In the settlers' eyes, and under existing Montana state law, the Indians had not "used" the water.
Doesn't look like the Broward County library has access to Project MUSE, but both FIU and FAu do. I think FIU is part of the Broward system, somwhow.
