The 1986 Currington vs Henderson case was decided by the Federal District Court in Oklahoma. The judge relied on a Supreme Court decision in making his finding for quiet title:
1. The owners on the North side in Oklahoma owned their property, with riparian rights out to the medial line of the river.
2. The government owned the rights in trust for the Indians from the mid point of the river to the South bank of the river on the Texas side, and any islands located in this portion of the river.
3. For the land in Texas, the Property rights begin South of the south bank of the river. The individual on the Texas side of the river had no riparian rights.
This is a paraphrase, and I might have accidentally included some of the Supreme Court's decision inadvertently to this Judge.
I started to read the Supreme Court cases, but the reference to the treaty of 1819 with Spain, led me to decide that I needed to know what that treaty was about, so I read through info on that treaty first, and haven't completed looking at the Supreme Court cases.
TREATY OF 1819 also known as the Adams/Onis Treaty:
Considered a good bit of diplomacy by Adams to settle disputed Territory between the US and Spain. In asserting US rights, Adams was determined that the entire River Bed should belong to the USA.
Onis on behalf of the Spanish Crown wanted the boundary to be the medial line of the River, but eventually acquiesced to Adams view. This was well documented in Adam's notes as well.
Hence the boundary between the USA Territory and Spanish Territory(Texas being included with Spanish at that point) was agreed by treaty to be the South Bank of the Red River.
All islands in the River were to be held by the USA. Now there was some specific language that this did not include individual property rights already established. The USA agreed that Spain would have full rights to navigate the River.
The USA also by treaty agreed to a sum of money to pay Spain for anticipated claims against them by Americans regarding disputed property rights (if I understood the language correctly).
The Supreme Court apparently has relied heavily on this treaty in their prior decisions regarding Texas/Oklahoma boundary and ownership issues. Search for State of Oklahoma v State of Texas for the Supreme Court cases.
The Treaty of 1819 was revoked and replaced with a new treaty in 1902 referred to as the Treaty of Friendship. I am not finished reading that, but when scanned, I did not see anything to address property ownership issues. It was more of a commerce/trade treaty. So they revoked the agreement, but didn't redefine it either.
So far, unless an individual land owner can trace ownership back to a date before the 1819 treaty and a land grant from Spain, it's it is shaping up to be an uphill battle for them to be able to assert rights to the property.
It's ironic that the assertion on behalf of the USA now puts Texas at a disadvantage when compared to other states. In general it appears that states usually use the medial line of the river for determination of their state boundaries. Apparently, Texas did not specify this as part of their contract to enter the Union..
None of which gets to the point of the BLM/Feds owning property in perpetuity, when they are constitutionally expected to divest of all but necessary ownership of the enumerated powers.
I will also quibble with use of USA ownership as Trustee for the Indians. In general, the use of the word Trustee does not mean ownership. For example, a bank may be named trustee for the estate of a minor child, but the bank does not and will not own the property in question.
Another avenue to look into is the adverse property rights. If the individual has been using the property for the specified period of time, and paying property taxes for that period too, then they might get some ownership/usage rights based on that.
So that's all I have at the moment, and I won't be able to get back to more research for a while, so please let me know any additional info you may find, as I am quite interested in the legal tangle that got us here, and any legal remedies that could be pursued.
Probably going to have to look into whatever treaty the US made with the Indians too. They have established through the courts that the property between the medial point of the river and the vegetation line on the south bank is the property that they are to hold in trust for the Indians.
Why do the Indians need the Feds to do that? The Indian tribes are educated, and perfectly capable of managing stuff these days it would seem to me.