How the Indians lost their land : law and power on the frontier
"Between the early seventeenth century and the early twentieth, nearly all the land in the United States was transferred from American Indians to whites. This dramatic transformation has been understood in two very different ways - as a series of consensual transactions, but also as a process of violent conquest. Both views cannot be correct. How did Indians actually lose their land?" "Stuart Banner provides the first comprehensive answer. He argues that neither simple coercion nor simple consent reflects the complicated legal history of land transfers. Instead, time, place, and the balance of power between Indians and settlers decided the outcome of land struggles. As the power of whites grew, they were able to establish the legal institutions and the rules by which land transactions would be made and enforced." "How the Indians Lost Their Land reveals how subtle changes in the law can determine the fate of a nation, and our understanding of the past."--Jacket
eBook, English, 2005
Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Mass., 2005
History
1 online resource (344 pages) : illustrations
9780674020535, 9780674023963, 9780674018716, 0674020537, 067402396X, 0674018710
607873802
Native proprietors
Manhattan for twenty-four dollars
From contract to treaty
A revolution in land policy
From ownership to occupancy
Removal
Reservations
Allotment
Electronic reproduction, [Place of publication not identified], HathiTrust Digital Library, 2010
In English