Page:Haaland v. Brackeen.pdf/97

Rh The States accordingly enacted numerous laws to regulate Indians within their territorial boundaries, as well as those Indians’ interactions with the States’ citizens. See, e.g., D. Rosen, American Indians and State Law 34, 52 (2007) (Rosen). For example, New York passed laws forbidding its citizens from suing to enforce contracts with Indians who lived on Indian lands, and Virginia regulated the sale of land held by Indians. See Laws of the Colonial and State Governments, Relating to Indians and Indian Affairs, From 1633 to 1831, pp. 65–67, 158–159 (1832). Massachusetts authorized its Governor to appoint guardians to oversee Indians and their property, while Ohio and Indiana forbade the sale of liquor to Indians. Id., at 21–22, 232–234.

On the whole, States also generally applied both their civil and criminal laws to Indians, with many extending their criminal laws to all Indians anywhere in the State—including, sometimes, on Indian reservations within the State. See Rosen 53; see also, e.g., Goodell v. ''Jackson ex dem. Smith'', 20 Johns. 693 (N. Y. Ct. Corr. Errors 1823); State v. Doxtater, 47 Wis. 278, 2 N. W. 439 (1879) (collecting cases). To be sure, some of these laws may have conflicted with valid federal treaties or statutes on point, and courts at the time often did not precisely demarcate the constitutional boundaries between state and federal authority. Rosen 55–56. But, when opponents of the Trade and Intercourse Acts’ criminal provisions complained that state