In Wheeler v. United States (1895), the Supreme Court ruled that a Native American who committed a crime on tribal land could not be prosecuted by federal authorities if they had already been punished by their tribe for the same offense. The case involved Major Moses Wheeler, an Indian agent, and Crow Dog, a member of the Brulé Sioux Tribe. After Crow Dog was acquitted in tribal court for killing another member of his tribe on reservation land, Wheeler attempted to prosecute him under federal law. However, the Supreme Court held that since Congress had not explicitly given federal courts jurisdiction over crimes committed between Native Americans on reservations - which are considered sovereign nations - double jeopardy applied and Crow Dog could not be tried again for the same crime.

In the dissenting opinion for Wheeler v. United States, Justice Harlan argued that a tribal member who committed an offense on reservation land could be prosecuted by both federal and tribal courts without violating the Double Jeopardy Clause of the Fifth Amendment. He asserted that Indian tribes were not foreign nations but domestic dependent nations under U.S. sovereignty, thus their laws were subordinate to those of Congress. Therefore, he believed it was within Congress's power to punish offenses against its own laws even if they had been previously tried in tribal court because these two jurisdictions did not derive their authority from the same source - one being national and other local or territorial in nature.