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Rh 418; see also Henderson v. Mayor of New York, 92 U. S. 259, 270 (1876) (quoting Holliday and echoing this point in the context of the Foreign Commerce Clause). More than that, Holliday recognized that this focus on individuals means that Indian commerce must cover “something more” than just economic exchange. 3 Wall., at 417 (internal quotation marks omitted). While it includes “buying and selling and exchanging commodities,” it also extends to the entire “intercourse between the citizens of the United States and those [T]ribes.” Ibid. That “intercourse,” the Court recognized, is “another branch of commerce” with Indians, “and a very important one” at that. Ibid.

If the Constitution’s text left any uncertainty about the scope of Congress’s Indian commerce power, early practice liquidated it. The First Congress adopted the initial Indian Trade and Intercourse Act, which prohibited the “sale of lands made by any Indians” to non-Indians absent a public treaty. Act of July 22, 1790, ch. 33, §4, 1 Stat. 138. The law also extended criminal liability to non-Indians who “commit[ted] any crime upon, or trespass against, the person or property of any peaceable and friendly Indian” in Indian country. §5, ibid. The first of these provisions arguably addressed a narrow question of commerce. But the second “plainly regulated noneconomic” interaction. A. Amar, America’s Constitution and the Yale School of Constitutional Interpretation, 115 Yale L. J. 1997, 2004, n. 25 (2006).

Despite that fact, the Act (and its successors) were “not controversial exercises of congressional power.” N. Newton, Federal Power Over Indians: Its Sources, Scope, and Limitations, 132 U. Pa. L. Rev. 195, 201, n. 25 (1984). Any doubt about their validity “would have been quieted by the [C]ommerce Clause’s commitment of commerce with the Indian [T]ribes to Congress.” Ibid. As Justice McLean (riding circuit) recognized, punishing non-Indians for “committing violence upon the persons or property of the Indians,” fell