How the Indians Lost Their Land: Law and Power on the Frontier

by Stuart Banner

Paperback, 2005

LCC

E98 L3 B36 2005

Description

Between the early seventeenth century and the early twentieth, nearly all the land in the United States was transferred from American Indians to whites. How did Indians actually lose their land? Stuart Banner 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.

Publication

Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2005

Notes

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.

Includes bibliographical references and index.