implies that the sole objection to the United
States legislating for foreign nations is, that they makes treaties with
them: whereas there are several other good and sufficient objections
thereto. It also implies that the sole consideration for the United
States treating with Indian tribes, called by Chief-Justice Marshall
"domestic dependent nations," is, that they cannot legislate for them:
whereas the real consideration has been one of practical convenience,
not of legislative competence.

We shall best set forth the constitutional relations of this subject by
presenting the premises, whether of fact or of law, upon which all the
judicial decisions relative thereto have been founded.

1. As matter of fact, the European powers engaged in the discovery and
conquest of the New World left with the Indian tribes the regulation of
their own domestic concerns, while claiming the sovereignty of the soil
occupied by them. The Indian tribes thus continued to act as separate
political communities.[O]

2. The Constitution of the United States excludes from the basis of
Congressional representation "Indians not taxed," without further
defining the same.

3. The Congress of the United States has, with a few recent exceptions,
treated Indians in tribal relations as without the municipal
jurisdiction of the United States.

4. The Senate of the United States has confirmed nearly four hundred
treaties, negotiated by the executive, under the general treaty-making
powers conferred by the Constitution, with tribes which embrace about
three-fifths of the present Indian population of the United States. The
House of Representatives has, from the foundation of the government, as
occasion required, originated bills for the appropriation of moneys to
carry out the provisions of such treaties.

This comprises all that is essential in this connection. The _indicia_
gathered from particular acts of the government, or from the phraseology
of individual treaties, really add nothing to the above.

We believe the following propositions to be consistent with the facts of
history and with the latest judicial decisions.

1. The exclusion by the Constitution of "Indians not taxed" from the
basis of representation was in no sense a guaranty to the Indian tribes
of their political autonomy, but was a provision in the interest of an
equitable apportionment of political power among the States, some States
having many Indians within their limits, oth