Buying America from the Indians: Johnson v. McIntosh and the History of Native Land Rights by Blake A. Watson, and: The Trail of Broken Treaties: Diplomacy in Indian Country from Colonial Times to Present ed. by Bartosz Hlebowicz with Adam Piekarski

Abstract

Did Native Americans truly own the land they inhabited? As law professor Blake A. Watson demonstrates in Buying America from the Indians, this question vexed generations of early American legal theorists. Ultimately, most agreed that Native Americans did not hold absolute title to their lands, which instead belonged to the European powers that had “discovered” those lands. While the book is primarily a history of the landmark 1823 Supreme Court case of Johnson and Graham’s Lessee v. McIntosh, Watson also explains how early American legal doctrines continue to affect the land rights of indigenous groups in the United States and abroad. His book will interest scholars of property law, Native American rights, and early American land speculation, as well as laypeople who enjoy narrative history.