Denver ? The Obama administration on Tuesday announced it will pay American Indians $3.4 billion to settle a class-action lawsuit that argued that the federal government cheated tribes for more than a century out of royalties for oil, mineral and other leases.

The settlement ends a 13-year legal battle that led to 3,600 filings, millions of pages of discovery documents and 11 appellate decisions. It is the largest settlement American Indians have ever received from the U.S. government, eclipsing the sum of all previous settlements, according to the plaintiff’s lawyers.

The dispute stemmed from a 19th century decision to grant parcels of land to individual American Indians and place the properties in trust accounts. For more than a century, the plaintiffs contended, the account holders were cheated out of their share of revenues the federal government collects for leasing that land.

“We are here to right a past wrong,” Interior Secretary Ken Salazar said Tuesday at a Washington, D.C., news conference to announce the settlement, which still must be approved by Congress and the courts.