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14 [C]rown to interfere with the internal affairs of the Indians.” Id., at 547; see also Vattel 60. Instead, the “settled state of things” reflected the British view that Tribes were “nations capable of maintaining the relations of peace and war; [and] of governing themselves.” 6 Pet., at 548–549.

Consistent with that understanding, the British regarded “the Indians as owners of their land.” S. Banner, How the Indians Lost Their Land: Law and Power on the Frontier 12 (2005). Britain often purchased land from Tribes (at least nominally) and predicated its system of legal title on those purchases. Ibid. The Crown entered into all manner of treaties with the Tribes too—just as it did with fellow European powers. See, e.g., Letter from Gov. Burnet to Lords of Trade, Nov. 21, 1722, concerning the Great Treaty of 1722 Between the Five Nations, the Mahicans, and the Colonies of New York, Virginia, and Pennsylvania, in 5 Documents Relative to the Colonial History of the State of New York 655–681 (E. O’Callaghan ed. 1955); Deed in Trust From Three of the Five Nations of Indians to the King in 1726, in id., at 800–801; A Treaty Held at the Town of Lancaster with the Indians of the Six Nations in 1744, in Indian Treaties, Printed by Benjamin Franklin, 1736–1762, pp. 43–49 (1938).

Ultimately, “the American Revolution replaced that legal framework with a similar one.” Oklahoma v. Castro-Huerta, 597 U. S. ___, ___ (2022) (, dissenting) (slip op., at 2). The newly independent Nation wasted no time entering into treaties of its own—in no small part to secure its continued existence against external threats. See, e.g., Articles of Agreement and Confederation, Sept. 17, 1778, 7 Stat. 13. In practice, too, “[t]he new Republic” broadly recognized “the sovereignty of Indian [T]ribes,” even if it did so “sometimes grudgingly.” W. Quinn, Federal Acknowledgment of American Indian Tribes: The Historical Development of a Legal Concept, 34 Am. J. L. Hist. 331, 337 (1990). As we will see, the period under the Articles of