The 16th Century European legal and religious Doctrine of Discovery gave title to newly discovered lands in the Western Hemisphere to the Crown of the discovering nation.   Under English law, all land titles were first vested in the King of England and the Indian tribes held subsequent title to the land under treaties with the King.   Land could be bought from the Indians by Europeans with prior approval of the English government.   In this way, the sales could be recorded properly by the European courts and protected by English law.   These legal principles and practices were assumed by the newly formed United States of America.   Therefore, no English colonist, later "American", could properly obtain title to land until (usually) he "extinguished the Indian title", after obtaining government approval.   Together with the sale of hides and furs, these purchases pretty much summarize most of the European-Indian relations in what later became the United States.   The land purchases usually were complicated, ambiguous, and favored the white man because he had more organization, mutual cooperation, weapons, disease and alcohol resistance, and population.

The Europeans and Indians often were mutually ignorant of which Indians owned the land.   Different tribes fought and killed each other for living, farming and hunting sites, so any tribe might claim specific territory, which meant that it might have to be purchased several times by Europeans.   It was also difficult for Europeans to know the appropriate Indian leaders with whom to deal, since Indian leadership and ownership might change or be contested.   Europeans soon learned to obtain as many sachem signatures from as many tribes as possible on the deeds and treaties to keep the documents binding.   Additionally, Indians often did not use proper nouns for places that served as boundaries; instead, they fixed boundaries using common nouns that left the boundaries ambiguous.   The Indians also had a cultural disadvantage because, except for a few personal possessions, "property" to them meant communal property to be enjoyed and used by all members of a tribe equally.   Thus, when they "sold" land to Europeans they meant that the Europeans could use it along with the Indians.   Until much later, they knew nothing of the "private property" concept of capitalism, market values, profit, exclusive usage, etc.   The Indian might still want to hunt on land purchased by the white man, whereas the farmer, miner and lumberman wanted no non-owners and trespassers on the lands they purchased.

The Indians knew nothing about the legal subtleties of the white man and his legal language as translated by interpreters, so they seldon knew precisely to what they subscribed.   Often, they had merely to "touch the pen" of the European scribe or "X" the signature line or place a clan symbol on the document to indicate their consent to a sale.   Also, their intolerance for alcohol enabled speculators to intoxicate them and then extract favorable terms of sale.   Because of their fondness for alcohol and lack of paying work, Indians were continually in debt, which was encouraged by land speculators, who then bought their lands to extinguish the debts.     Bribing Indian chiefs and their interpreters was another tactic used by land speculators.   Finally, many European diseases against which Indians had no natural defenses killed so many Indians during periodic epidemics, that at times there were not very many Indians to occupy their lands, tempting them to sell and move on to other lands with better hunting grounds rather than resist white man encroachment .   Of course, Indians were not stupid and could be duplicitous when selling land.   Given the opportunity by competing Europeans and Americans, they sometime sold the same land with intentional ambiguous borders several times to different buyers.

Indians used the land for hunting and farming by methods that were wasteful compared to European methods of farming with crops and domesticated animals; that is, it took much more land to keep and hunt wild animals and raise such crops as corn, beans, pumpkins and squash than to keep and graze domesticated animals and plant wheat, rice, and corn in the European manner.   Stated differently, the same amount of land could feed many more Europeans than it could Indians, so Europeans could multiply faster than Indians.

These different views about property and ownership created severe problems between Indians, Europeans and Americans that often culminated in war.   Indians on the warpath, with their reputations for exquisitely cruel torture, terrified settlers, who never knew when Indians might swoop down on them with tomahawk and scalping knife.   When attacked, the settlers too could be ferocious, killing Indian warriors and their families with abandon, especially when they were perceived as revenge wars.   The net result of these wars was one-sided, since Europeans had superior numbers and weapons, alcohol and disease tolerance, cooperation and organization that were irresistable.   If Indians attacked and killed white squatters (people who settled on land with no legal title), and they were many all over the countlry, retaliatory raids and wars would result in treaties that conceded more Indian land to Europeans. Ultimately, the land now comprising the United States, once occupied sparsely throughout by Indians, became the property of millions of European descendents and the U.S. government.   The Indians were left with reservations that continually shrank in size as they were slowly sold to extinguish debt, poverty and encroachment.

When the United States became an independent nation, it followed the example set by England and other European nations by dealing with Indian tribes as sovereign nations through treaties and English laws.   The Northwest Territory Ordinance of 1787 made the U.S. government responsible for Native American property, rights, and liberty in that area, but it was not specific.   The United States Constitution could have defined the legal status of Indian tribes, but it did not.   The Constitution only mentions Indian tribes twice (1 and 2), neither dealing with the legal status of the Indians.   Since the matter was left unclear in founding U.S. laws, Americans could use a variety of ruses to acquire land.   Eventually, there were thousands of treaties made between Americans and Europeans with Indians over three centuries, and almost every one was broken using a variety of stratagems to gain more Indian land for the Europeans and Americans.   The white man wanted the land and was determined to get it, one way or another.   The Indians were in the way.

The U.S. Congress frequently changed Indian treaties without the consent of Indians and these changes were upheld by the federal courts.   These laws earlier always favored the settlers, since the voters wanted more and more land to farm, mine, and lumber, a Congressman, Senator, or Governor who resisted taking the land from the Indians by questionable means would soon be out of office.   Thus, the "tyranny of the masses".

By default, it became the province of the federal judiciary to define the legal status of Indian nations.   The result has been a continuous vacillation in federal law defining Indian sovereignty, which has never been satisfactorily resolved to this day.   However, the main precepts governing the relationships between Indians and U.S. citizens were established by three Supreme Court decisions under John Marshall:

In 1823, in Johnson v. McIntosh, The Supreme Court ruled that Indian tribes could not sell land to private parties without the consent of Congress.   The Court reasons that by right of conquest by Europeans, which was assumed by the United States of America when it achieved its independence, Indians were deprived of complete sovereignty of the land.

In 1831, in Cherokee Nation v. Georgia, The Supreme Court ruled that the Indian tribes were "domestic dependent nations" and not foreign nations.   Therefore, they could not sue a state in a Federal Court.   Instead, Indian nations are dependent on Congress to regulate their affairs through laws.

In 1832, in Worcester v. Georgia,Tthe Supreme Court ruled that the Federal Government had jurisdiction over Indians and their territories within any state.   Therefore, the regulatory and taxing laws of the State of Georgia (and any other state) did not apply to Indian Territory.   This decision overturned an 1830 Georgia law requiring white citizens living in Cherokee country to have a state license and requiring them to pledge allegiance to the state.   The Supreme Court declared that Indian treaties with the U.S. are the highest law in the land and supersede all other laws.   Therefore, only the U.S. Congress had power to regulate matters within the Indian territories.

The Europeans and Americans fought the Indians and each other over the ownership of the land that now constitutes the U.S.A.   Overwhelmed by superior force and numbers, vulnerable to disease and alcohol, unwilling to live as the white man, powerless before the white man's laws, the Indians, with no place to go, lost just about everything, even most of their reservations, in what is now the United States.