Olson

The Tee-Hit-Ton Tribe of Alaska Indians, hereinafter called the Tribe, appeals from a judgment sustaining a demurrer to and dismissing its complaint for an injunction against the defendants, federal officeholders and employees of the Fish and Wildlife Service of the United States Department of the Interior, hereinafter called the Service, for the destruction of its claimed exclusive right to take fish for commercial purposes in the waters of Salmon Bay and Lake Bay, sometimes called Barnes Lake, on the northeast coast of Prince of Wales Island, southeast Alaska.

The complaint alleges that two streams of red salmon, one seeking to spawn in the upper waters tributary to Salmon Bay and the other the upper waters of Barnes Lake, annually pass through these waters. Until a regulation of the Service forbidding all fishing for commercial purposes there, appellant annually seined in both bays from 80,000 to 375,000 red salmon. The method of such prc'ihibition is asserted to be an excessive abuse of the regulatory power conferred by Congress.

It is alleged that the Service has licensed a series of fish traps taking salmon from these two streams. One is on the inside of Warren Island,…