The holding was that the Act of 1877 had not been a valid exercise of Congress’s power to manage tribal property for the benefit of the tribes.

It had been, in the legal terminology the Court applied, a “taking” of tribal property — a seizure that, under the Fifth Amendment’s just compensation clause, required the United States to pay the Sioux for what it had taken.

Justice Blackmun’s opinion included a phrase that has been quoted many times since: “A more ripe and rank case of dishonorable dealings will never, in all probability, be found in our history.”

The Court upheld the award of $17.1 million in damages — the estimated fair market value of the Black Hills as of 1877, when the taking occurred — plus interest accumulated from 1877 to the date of the judgment.

That interest, running more than a century at a set rate, produced the large figure.

What the Court conspicuously did not do was order the return of the land.