United States v. John, 437 U.S. 634 (1978), was a case in which the Supreme Court of the United States held that lands designated as a reservation in Mississippi are "Indian country" as defined by statute, although the reservation was established nearly a century after Indian removal and related treaties.

[1] The Choctaw lived in Mississippi and other areas of the Southeast since well before the Revolutionary War, and were recognized by their treaty with the United States in 1786.

There was pressure from European Americans on the federal government and state to open these lands for white settlement.

Federal policy at that time was to encourage the removal of the Choctaw and other Native Americans to Indian Territory west of the Mississippi River, in what became present-day Oklahoma.

In the 1930s, the Franklin D. Roosevelt administration encouraged the revival of Native American tribes with the passage of the Indian Reorganization Act.

In 1939 Congress authorized funds to provide a reservation for what was to become the federally recognized Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians.

Crow Dog was ordered released, having made restitution under tribal law to Spotted Tail's family, as was considered acceptable within the tribe.

[17] Subsequent to that trial, John and his son were indicted by a state grand jury in Leake County, Mississippi for aggravated assault, based on the same facts.

In May 1997, the Mississippi Supreme Court determined that the Indian title to the land was extinguished under the removal treaties.

By the plain text of the statute, this gives the U.S. District Court jurisdiction, since the lands were "within the limits of [an] Indian reservation."

Mississippi argued that the Treaty of Dancing Rabbit Creek ended the federal oversight of Choctaw Indians who remained in the state after 1833.

[33] That act gave tribal courts exclusive jurisdiction on adoptions in which the child's parents lived on a reservation.