That this is not good law need not be argued, inasmuch as the decisions previously cited in the United States _vs._ Rogers and in the Cherokee Tobacco, assert the complete sovereignty of the United States in strong terms[N]; in the latter, the doctrine being explicitly affirmed, that not only does the capability of making a treaty with the United States, which has been held to reside in an Indian tribe, not exempt that tribe from the legislative power of Congress, but that not even a treaty made and ratified, among the stipulations of which is such an exemption, even were that exemption the consideration for cessions the benefit of which the United States has enjoyed and continues to enjoy, can hinder Congress from at any time extending its complete legislative control over the tribe. Considerations of good faith may influence individual Congressmen in such a case; but the constitutional competence of Congress in the premises is declared to be beyond question. Nor is the extraordinary proposition of the Committee's report better in reason than in law. The argument is in effect this: The United States makes treaties with foreign nations; the United States cannot legislate for foreign nations; the United States may make treaties with Indian tribes: ergo, the United States cannot legislate for Indian tribes. This course of reasoning implies that the sole objection to the United States legislating for foreign nations is, that they makes treaties with them: whereas there are several other good and sufficient objections thereto. It also implies that the sole consideration for the United States treating with Indian tribes, called by Chief-Justice Marshall "domestic dependent nations," is, that they cannot legislate for them: whereas the real consideration has been one of practical convenience, not of legislative competence. We shall best set forth the constitutional relations of this subject by presenting the premises, whether of fact or of law, upon which all the judicial decisions relative thereto have been founded. 1. As matter of fact, the European powers engaged in the discovery and conquest of the New World left with the Indian tribes the regulation of their own domestic concerns, while claiming the sovereignty of the soil occupied by them. The Indian tribes thus continued to act as separate political communities.[O] 2. The Constitution of the United States excludes from the basis of Congressional representation "Indians not taxed," without further defining the same. 3. The Congress of the United States has, with a few recent exceptions, treated Indians in tribal relations as without the municipal jurisdiction of the United States.