The road of US Indian law and policy, like its companion to hell, is paved with good intentions. Critics of its generally diabolic outcomes have had little difficulty demonstrating the moral chasm between the appealing rhetoric in which a policy or judgment was framed and the oppressive consequences to which it practically conduced. With a nod to twentieth-century literary criticism, the author calls this style of utopianism the "intentional fallacy". As originally coined, this term signaled the rejection of authorial intention as a controller of textual meaning. In this article, the author presents a historical critique of the intentional fallacy. Examples are widespread, not least in the writings of eminent historians. To reduce a pervasive phenomenon to manageability, however, this article focuses on a core historiography, moving from the three canonical Indian judgments that Chief Justice John Marshall delivered during the 1820s and 1830s--especially "Worcester v. Georgia" (1832), which many scholars have held to mark a high point in the assertion of Indian rights--through the Indian-policy nadir of congressional plenary power, which commentators have generally associated with the "Kagama" (1886) and "Lone Wolf v. Hitchcock" (1903) judgments that were delivered at the height of the Dawes-era reforms. The author argues that the intentional fallacy has not only served as a legitimating device for judges and policy makers. With significant exceptions, it has also structured the narration of Indian law and policy in historical and legal-studies scholarship. (Contains 143 notes.)