Can private individuals acquire title to land directly from Native American tribes in a manner that is valid and enforceable in the courts of the United States, without the sanction of the government that holds the discoverer's title?

The plaintiffs claimed title to land in what is now Illinois under two grants, made in 1773 and 1775, from the chiefs of the Illinois and Piankeshaw nations to private purchasers, through whom the plaintiffs traced their title. The parties stipulated that the chiefs had authority to convey under their own tribal customs and that the tribes were in rightful possession of the land they sold. The defendant, William M'Intosh, claimed the same land under a grant from the United States government, which had acquired the territory from Virginia, which in turn had ceded its chartered western lands to the Union. The Illinois and Piankeshaw nations later ceded the area to the United States by treaty without reserving the land the plaintiffs claimed. The plaintiffs brought an action of ejectment to recover the land, and the controversy turned on whether a title derived from Indian grants to private individuals could prevail over a title derived from the United States.

The plaintiffs brought an action of ejectment against M'Intosh in the District Court of Illinois, and the facts were submitted on a case agreed or special verdict. The District Court entered judgment against the plaintiffs. The plaintiffs brought the case to the United States Supreme Court, which heard argument and affirmed the judgment of the District Court.

(Marshall, C.J.)

No. Private individuals cannot acquire a title from Native American tribes that courts of the United States will recognize against a title derived from the government.

Discovery gave the European nation whose subjects made it, and its successors, an exclusive right to acquire the soil from the natives and to establish settlements. This principle was asserted by Spain, Portugal, France, Holland, and England and was recognized in every colonial charter, in treaties among European powers, and in the grants of the crown. The Indians were recognized as rightful occupants with a legal claim to retain possession and use the land, but their sovereignty and their power to dispose of the soil to whomever they pleased were necessarily diminished. The discoverer held the ultimate title, subject only to the Indian right of occupancy.

The United States succeeded to the rights of Great Britain by the treaty ending the Revolution, and the states and the Union have uniformly asserted the exclusive power to extinguish Indian title by purchase or conquest and to grant the soil. An absolute title cannot exist at once in different persons or governments. Because all titles in the country derive from grants by the crown or the United States, a title held by the Indians that could be conveyed to individuals is incompatible with the title on which the nation's land system rests. Fletcher v. Peck confirms that Indian occupancy is not repugnant to a seisin in fee held by the state.

The purchaser from the Indians also takes only what the tribe could give, held under tribal law and at tribal will, and the tribes later ceded the land to the United States without reserving it. The Royal Proclamation of 1763 independently forbade such purchases. Whatever the abstract justice of the doctrine, a rule on which the country has been settled and on which the property of the great mass of the community depends has become the law of the land, and courts cannot reject it. The plaintiffs' title cannot be sustained, and the judgment is affirmed.