Indian Tribes and Political Liberty by Russel
REVIEWS The Road: Indian Tribes and PoliticalLiberty. RUSSEL LAWRENCE BARSH AND JAMES YOUNGBLOOD HENDERSON. University of Califor- nia Press, Berkeley, 1980. Pp. xv, 301. $14.95. Robert N. Clintont Until the late nineteenth century, the United States generally treated Indian tribes as self-governing political entities. Chief Jus- tice Marshall, for example, characterized the tribes as "domestic dependent nations"1 ; to him, they were autonomous, but depen- dent, states that retained powers of self-government2 while assum- ing the protection of the United States. Even after the rapid west- ward movement of the frontier made the policy of physically separating tribes from the states impossible, the federal govern- ment sought to protect the Indians' autonomy by denying newly admitted states jurisdiction over the tribes within state boundaries.' Beginning in the 1880s, the political relationship between the tribes, the states, and the federal government began to change; this was the first of many fluctuations of federal policy between the extremes of forced assimilation of Indians and the protection of their legal, political, and cultural autonomy. In 1885, Congress es- tablished federal and state jurisdiction over some crimes commit- ted between Indians on tribal lands,4 and in 1887 it asserted fed- t Professor of Law, The University of Iowa College of Law. The ideas offered in this review originate in research the reviewer has undertaken for a forthcoming book on federal authority over Indian affairs under the Indian commerce clause. Further elaboration of some of these ideas may be found in Brief of Appellee Indian Tribes at 65-90, Washington v.
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