This U.S. Department of the Interior map, published in 1906, shows Oklahoma and Indian Country, including the Creek reservation. The U.S. Supreme Court heard arguments Tuesday on whether that reservation remained intact following Oklahoma statehood. [ILLUSTRATION PROVIDED/U.S. SUPREME COURT]

U.S. Supreme Court arguments last week in a Muscogee (Creek) Nation reservation case made clear where several justices stand, placed large question marks next to others and left some Indian law experts yearning for the one justice who wasn't there.

For an hour and five minutes Tuesday, the nation's high court debated whether a Creek reservation established in 1866 still exists, as the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals determined last year, or if it had been disestablished by Oklahoma statehood in 1907, as has long been assumed.

"It seemed clear that Justices Alito and Kavanaugh took a dim view of the 10th Circuit's ruling, seemingly based on policy concerns,” said Stephen Greetham, senior counsel for the Chickasaw Nation, which was not a party in the case but supports the Creeks. “It seemed equally clear that Justices Kagan and Sotomayor took a dim view of the case for reversal.”

Samuel Alito and Brett Kavanaugh are conservatives; Elena Kagan and Sonia Sotomayor are liberals. But that's where the traditional ideological fissures end in this case. The position of Justice Clarence Thomas, a conservative, remains a mystery, as does that of liberal Justice Stephen Breyer.