The Law and Land Cessions.

Johnson v. M'Intosh (1823) was the first in a crucial line of nineteenthcentury Supreme Court cases to delineate the extent and limitations of American Indian sovereignty. Chief Justice John Marshall wrote the opinion and later elaborated many of the same principles in Cherokee Nation v. Georgia (1831) and Worcester v. Georgia (1832). In Johnson v. M'Intosh Marshall tried to describe the limits of Indian sovereignty (indigenous peoples' political rights to self-determination and self-government) in order to sort out the legal position of American Indians in the rapidly expanding United States. During the early nineteenth century U.S. citizens had made substantial encroachments on American Indian lands, and there was little sign that this movement would end on its own. The federal government, eager to get lands for white settlers and to avoid conflict with Indians, tried to negotiate land cessions from...