In the early nineteenth century President Jefferson imagined the United States as a continental agrarian empire. Several key events during this period had important effects on US-Indian relations. The Louisiana Purchase (1803) gave the United States a claim (at least in the eyes of European nations) to a 828,000 square mile area of land that stretched from the Mississippi River to present-day New Mexico, Colorado, Wyoming, and Montana. This area was inhabited by numerous Indian nations, but to US officials this land purchase gave to the young nation a tract of "empty" land to which eastern tribes could potentially be removed. The end of the War of 1812, moreover, represented the end of an era during which Native nations were able to forge strong alliances with the British to resist the United States. In this module we will consider how President Jefferson and other US officials forged an Indian policy during this time of increased US imperial aspirations.
|
Study Questions
|
In the 1820s and 1830s the Great Lakes region was home to a range of dynamic and modern Native American nations that had long interacted with one another, as well as with European and American traders. As the US sought to expand westward, however, the region was seen as a important area for the mining of minerals, and various expeditions were organized to chart the region's mineral resources. The Michigan Territory, which ranged as far west as the Mississippi River, was established by an act of Congress in 1805. It was first governed by the Territorial Governor William Hull and later (from 1813 to 1831) by Lewis Cass. In this area the Anishinaabeg had longstanding ties with French, British, and American fur traders, and present-day Michigan was densely populated by various native nations. In this module we will think about the key term "settler colonialism" to think about how US nation-building (in this case in the Michigan Territory) was hinged on the appropriation of native lands and on narratives of native disappearance. In Lorenzo Veracini's terms, if colonialism is centered on the domination of foreign territories and the exploitation of native labor, settler colonialism is centered on making foreign territories into domestic ones, and the attempt to take native land rather than labor. Keeping Veracini's framework in mind, we will think about how this settler-colonial logic surfaced in the history of the Michigan Territory in the nineteenth century.
|
Study Questions
|