| Book Review | The Western Historical Quarterly, 37.4

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| Book Review | The Western Historical Quarterly, 37.4 | The History Cooperative

*Conquest by Law: How the Discovery of America Dispossessed Indigenous Peoples of Their Lands*. By Lindsay G. Robertson. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005. xviii + 239 pp. Illustrations, maps, appendices, notes, bibliography, index. $29.95.)
Armed with a bounty of primary source material from the United Illinois and Wabash Land companies that no other scholar had seen, Robertson weaves an intriguing tale which conclusively shows that "Johnson [v. M'Intosh (1823)] was a collusive case, an attempt by speculators in Indian lands to take advantage of since-closed loopholes in the early federal judicial system to win a judgment from the Supreme Court recognizing their claim to millions of acres" (p. xi).	1
Other commentators on this case have long suspected that something was terribly troubling about the way this case was prosecuted, and many suspected that Chief Justice John Marshall had ulterior motives when he ruled against the title claims of the plaintiffs, Johnson and the land companies, but also declared "that upon discovery by Europeans, the Indians lost to the discovering sovereigns title to the lands they occupied, all that remained to them was an occupancy right, which only the sovereign might acquire" (p. 75).	. . .

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