A 40-acre allotment had 439 owners, Congress let tiny shares pass to the tribe instead of the heirs, and the Supreme Court struck the law down twice

Allotment divided reservations into parcels held in federal trust for individual Indians. Each death split a parcel among more heirs. The Supreme Court described Tract 1305 on the Sisseton-Wahpeton reservation: 40 acres, 439 owners, worth $8,000, costing the Bureau of Indian Affairs an estimated $17,560 a year to administer. The largest owner received $82.85 a year; the smallest was due one cent every 177 years. In 1983 Congress passed section 207, under which any share of 2 percent or less of a tract that earned under $100 the year before passed to the tribe at the owner's death, with no compensation. Heirs of Oglala Sioux members who died in 1983 sued over 41 such interests. On 18 May 1987 the Court ruled 7 to 2, in an opinion by Justice O'Connor, that abolishing both descent and devise "goes too far" and was a taking. Congress amended the law in 1984. William Youpee died in 1990 leaving each of his shares, worth about $1,239 in all, to one descendant; the shares escheated under the new rule. On 21 January 1997 the Court ruled 8 to 1 that the amendment did not cure the defect. Under the 2009 Cobell settlement, the Land Buy-Back Program paid $1.69 billion for fractional interests from 2012 to November 2022 and restored more than a million interests to tribal ownership.