The Pechanga Band of Mission Indians claims that its reservation includes 320 acres of undeveloped land in Riverside County, California, to which the defendants hold title. The district court entered summary judgment against the Band on three independent grounds. We need reach only the ground that the Government did not grant the land to the Band in order to affirm the district court's judgment.

Ownership of the land turns on events from the late 19th century. Peter Mouren, the defendants' predecessor-in-interest, obtained a patent to some of the land in 1882 and a second patent to the remainder in 1885. Due to suspected fraud by Mouren, the Government brought two lawsuits in 1894 to set aside the patents. It dropped the suits in mid-1901 prior to any decision on the merits.

The Pechanga Band derives whatever interest it may have in the land from the reservations established pursuant to two acts of Congress. In 1864, Congress empowered the President to set apart land in California "to be retained by the United States for the purposes of Indian reservations." The Four Reservations Act § 2, ch. 48, 13 Stat. 39, 40. Under the 1864 Act, the President could change reservation sites almost at will. See Mattz v. Arnett, 412 U.S. 481, 494 n.15, 93 S. Ct. 2245, 2252, 37 L. Ed. 2d 92 (1973); Donnelly v. United States, 228 U.S. 243, 256-57, 33 S. Ct. 449, 452-453, 57 L. Ed. 820 (1913). Through a series of Executive Orders over the two decades after the passage of the Act, a reservation for the Pechanga Band was established, disestablished, re-established and reshaped. See 1 C. Kappler, Indian Affairs, Laws, and Treaties 819-24 (1904) (reproducing the Orders).1 One of the Orders is especially important to this appeal. On June 27, 1882, President Arthur established a site for the Band's reservation which seems to have included the land presently at issue.2

Because the constantly-changing reservation sites under the 1864 Act proved unsatisfactory, Congress enacted the Mission Indians Relief Act, ch. 65, 26 Stat. 712 (1891). See Arenas v. United States, 322 U.S. 419, 421, 64 S. Ct. 1090, 1091, 88 L. Ed. 1363 (1944). The 1891 Act empowered the Secretary of the Interior to oversee the establishment of new, more secure reservations.3 The first step in the process was for him to appoint commissioners to propose reservation sites. Their selection became "valid when approved by the President and the Secretary of the Interior." The Act instructed the Secretary that "if no valid objection exists, (he) shall cause a patent to issue for each of the reservations selected by the commission." An explicit constraint on this consummating act was that "no patent shall embrace any tract or tracts to which existing valid rights have attached in favor of any person under any of the United States laws providing for the disposition of the public domain."

The Pechanga Band's present reservation was established pursuant to the 1891 Act. The commissioners' proposal included the land at issue, and President Harrison directed that the proposed site be set aside until a patent could be issued. The Secretary of the Interior, however, decided to issue a patent only to the uncontested parcels and await a judicial determination on whether Mouren had a valid right to the land at issue. Because the Government dropped its suits against Mouren prior to any decision on the merits, the Secretary never issued a patent to the Band for the land. The Secretary thus did not take the final step required under the Act to include the land in the reservation.

The Pechanga Band makes two arguments why we should find that it has a legal interest in the land despite the Secretary's decision not to include it in the patent establishing the Band's reservation: (1) the Secretary lacked authority to remove land from the reservation established by the 1882 Executive Order, and (2) the actions taken by him pursuant to the 1891 Act effectively conveyed the land to the Band. We find neither argument persuasive.

The Mission Indians Relief Act of 1891 worked to extinguish whatever interest the Band had in the land pursuant to the 1882 Executive Order. A primary purpose of the 1891 Act was to replace the old, constantly-changing reservations with new, more secure ones. Although the new reservations were to "include, as far as practicable, the lands and villages which have been in actual occupation and possession of said Indians," inclusion of the prior sites was not mandated.

The Pechanga Band asserts, however, that the 1882 Order was a presidential act that could not be reversed by the Secretary of the Interior. In support of this assertion, it cites Sekaquaptewa v. MacDonald, 626 F.2d 113, 118 (9th Cir. 1980); United States v. Southern Pacific Transportation Co., 601 F.2d 1059, 1064 (9th Cir. 1979), and United States v. Southern Pacific Transportation Co., 543 F.2d 676, 689 (9th Cir. 1976). Because the officials in those cases were not empowered to convey the land there at issue, we held that their actions had no effect. But in this case, Congress authorized the Secretary to decide what land to include in the Pechanga Band's new reservation. The Band does not contend that Congress lacked power to extinguish whatever rights were created by the 1882 Order, or that Congress could not convey that power to the Secretary.

Despite the Secretary's decision not to include the land in the patent, the Pechanga Band urges us to consider the Secretary's apparent desire to enlarge the reservation. The Band has not, however, supplied us with any reason to look past the Secretary's unambiguous actions. Both opinions cited by the Band discussed intent only because the actions taken by the official did not purport to modify the reservation site. Sekaquaptewa v. MacDonald, 626 F.2d at 118; United States v. Southern Pacific Transportation Co., 543 F.2d at 690. In this case, the Secretary had to issue a patent to the land in order to include it in the reservation. The record is unambiguous that he purposefully elected not to take this final step. We therefore cannot speculate whether the Secretary would have preferred in the abstract to grant the land to the Pechanga Band.

Indians have a special relationship with the federal government and are entitled to special protection. See Red Fox v. Red Fox, 564 F.2d 361, 365 (9th Cir. 1977). However, we cannot avoid the conclusions that the patent establishing the Pechanga Band's reservation did not include the land at issue, and that we cannot independently grant the land to the Band.

AFFIRMED.