OHQ vol. 115, no. 4 REVIEWS BUYING AMERICA FROM THE INDIANS: JOHNSON V. MCINTOSH AND THE HISTORY OF NATIVE LAND RIGHTS by Blake A. Watson University of Oklahoma Press, Norman, 2012. Illustrations, maps, bibliography, index. 456 pages. $45.00 cloth. This volume provides a detailed description and analysis of events leading to the U.S. Supreme Court’s 1823 decision in the case of Johnson v. McIntosh and the momentous impact of that ruling on Native American land rights. The case evolved from separate purchases of large tracts of tribal lands in Illinois and Indiana, from the Illinois and Piankeshaw Indians in 1773 and 1775, by land speculation syndicates comprised of prominent Pennsylvania and Maryland investors. The long-standing issue addressed in the 1823 decision was whether tribes owned the lands they occupied and had the right to convey those lands to any party,including private land speculators, or if such proprietary rights were vested exclusively in governments. Additionally , if only the latter case was applicable, the courts had to determine which governmental entity held or assumed that authority: the British Crown, the separate colonies or states, or the United States. Although there were few legal precedents that favored the Johnson plaintiff’s position — argued by the eminent jurists Robert Goodloe Harper and Daniel Webster — that tribes owned and had the right to convey the lands they occupied, many prominent Americans championed that view. Those included, but were not limited to, Roger Williams regarding his purchase of tribal lands in Rhode Island, settlers of Newark, New Jersey, eminent lawyer Patrick Henry of Virginia, and Benjamin Franklin, Samuel Wharton, and Henry Knox of Pennsylvania. In the opinion authored by Chief Justice John Marshall, the Court ruled in the Johnson decision that Native tribes had no natural right to own or convey title to lands they occupied. Rather, Marshall held that under the Doctrine of Discovery,title was conferred to the government (in this case the United States) that was successor to the nation that discovered the land. Yet, his opinion recognized that title by discovery was not absolute because tribes held a legal claim to possession of their lands, but it gave to the United States a preemptive right above all other parties to purchase tribal land. The impact of the Johnson decision has been far-reaching and enduring as precedent into the present century. Despite rhetoric in recent decades about the equalitarian existence of a “government-to-government relationship” between federally recognized tribes and the United States, the Court’s denial of proprietary title rights has severely limited tribal sovereignty and drastically diminished the political status and governmental authority that tribes, as independent nations, held prior to “discovery.” Author Blake A. Watson first became interested in the Johnson case while serving as an attorney for the U.S. Department of Justice. The decision later became the initial focus of his property classes in his current position as a law professor at the University of Dayton. His monograph presents a complex challenge to readers, because he has chosen to place consideration of the issues involved in a broader and richer context of political, economic, and social history of early America. Although the focus on so many events and personalities is at times both fascinating and confusing,Watson’s thoroughly researched work is extremely well Reviews written.Most chapters include a summary that helps readers reestablish the overall context. Both the subject matter and the complexity of the narrative, however, appear to limit the audience and utility of Buying America to practitioners of federal Indian law, students in law or graduate school courses, and, perhaps, a very select group of lay readers. Watson devotes his concluding chapters to the enduring legacy of the Johnson decision in international law and its reinforcement of the Doctrine of Discovery. The author also makes clear that he is a critical advocate for repudiation of both the decision and the doctrine. What he does not make clear or explore are the effects and possible unintended consequences that such repudiation would have on long-standing Constitutional interpretations, such as under the Commerce Clause, and federal statutes, such as the NonIntercourse Acts,which established Congress’s plenary and preemptive...