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Page Number: 71

Cite as:  599 U. S. ____ (2023) 

29 

GORSUCH, J., concurring 

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 “in-
tercourse  between  the  citizens  of  the  United  States  and 
those [T]ribes.”  Ibid.  That “intercourse,” the Court recog-
nized, 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  “com-
mit[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  Constitu-
tional  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 Lim-
itations,  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 In-
dian [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