An unintended consequence of the Indian wars was the way they shaped future water rights in the San Juan River system. When the Navajo reservation was established in 1868, it implicitly carried large water rights, due to the poor fertility of the land and consequentially the great volumes of water required to farm it. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in "Winters v. United States" (1908) that a federally established Indian reservation was "entitled to the water needed to create a permanent homeland." In 2005 the state of New Mexico reached a settlement with the Navajo Nation, where the Navajo finally secured their claim to over of San Juan River water. Due to the prior appropriation doctrine, the Navajo now possess the best water rights to the San Juan River. In "Cadillac Desert", Marc Reisner writes: "The Indians, where water was concerned, clearly had the upper hand. The white man's cavalry had made beggars of them; now his courts had made them kings."