Opinion of the Court
Regulations, there are reports that a group of Crow Tribe members “regularly hunted along the Little Bighorn River” even after the regulation the State cites was in effect. Hoxie, Parading Through History, at 26. In 1889, the Office of Indian Affairs wrote to U. S. Indian Agents in the Northwest that “[f]requent complaints have been made to this Department that Indians are in the habit of leaving their reservations for the purpose of hunting.” 28 Cong. Rec. 6231 (1896).
Even assuming that Wyoming presents an accurate historical picture, the State’s mode of analysis is severely flawed. By using statehood as a proxy for occupation, Wyoming subverts this Court’s clear instruction that treaty-protected rights “are not impliedly terminated upon statehood.” Mille Lacs, 526 U. S., at 207.
Finally, to the extent that Wyoming seeks to rely on this same evidence to establish that all land in Wyoming was functionally “occupied” by 1890, its arguments fall outside the question presented and are unpersuasive in any event. As explained below, the Crow Tribe would have understood occupation to denote some form of residence or settlement. See infra, at 19–20. Furthermore, Wyoming cannot rely on Race Horse to equate occupation with statehood, because that case’s reasoning rested on the flawed belief that statehood could not coexist with a continuing treaty right. See Race Horse, 163 U. S., at 514; Mille Lacs, 526 U. S., at 207–208.
Applying Mille Lacs, this is not a hard case. The Wyoming Statehood Act did not abrogate the Crow Tribe’s hunting right, nor did the 1868 Treaty expire of its own accord at that time. The treaty itself defines the circumstances in which the right will expire. Statehood is not one of them.
III
We turn next to the question whether the 1868 Treaty
