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The Half Breed Tracts in Early National America

Changing Concepts of Land and Place

  • Book
  • © 2019

Overview

Authors:
  1. David Ress

    1. Newport News, USA

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  • Explores nineteenth-century ideas about land tenure, property and citizenship through the history of reservations set aside for the children of Native American women and white men

  • Sheds light on an understudied episode in the history of US land policy

  • Appeals to scholars and students of nineteenth-century American history, US land policy, Native American studies, settler colonialism, and the history of ideas of rights and property

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Table of contents (9 chapters)

  1. Front Matter

    Pages i-ix
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  2. Introduction: A Caught-Between People and an Undefined Land

    • David Ress
    Pages 1-17

  3. Blondeau ’s Dilemma

    • David Ress
    Pages 19-35

  4. Separation or Separate Property: The Unsettling Prospect of Ownership

    • David Ress
    Pages 37-52

  5. Washington’s Dilemma

    • David Ress
    Pages 53-61

  6. The Courthouse Coup in Iowa

    • David Ress
    Pages 63-76

  7. Scrip and the Taking of the Minnesota Half Breed Tract

    • David Ress
    Pages 77-89

  8. Taking the Nebraska Half Breed Tract

    • David Ress
    Pages 91-102

  9. Charley’s Land

    • David Ress
    Pages 103-113

  10. Conclusion

    • David Ress
    Pages 115-125

  11. Back Matter

    Pages 127-130
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Keywords

About this book

In 1824 and 1830, over one hundred thousand acres across Iowa, Minnesota and Nebraska were set aside as a home for descendants of Native American women and white traders and trappers. The treaties that established these so-called Half Breed Tracts left undefined exactly who held claim to the land, and by the end of the 1850s, settlers and speculators had appropriated virtually every acre for themselves. But in an era of ravenous westward expansion, why did the process of dispossession require three decades of debate and legal maneuvering? As David Ress argues, the fate of the Half Breed Tracts complicates longstanding ideas about land tenure and community in early national America.

Authors and Affiliations

  • Newport News, USA

    David Ress

About the author

David Ress is a journalist and honorary research associate at the University of New England, Australia. He is the author of Municipal Accountability in the American Age of Reform (Palgrave, 2018) and Governor Edward Coles and the Vote to Forbid Slavery in Illinois, 1823–1824 (2006).

Bibliographic Information

  • Book Title: The Half Breed Tracts in Early National America

  • Book Subtitle: Changing Concepts of Land and Place

  • Authors: David Ress

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-31467-5

  • Publisher: Palgrave Pivot Cham

  • eBook Packages: History, History (R0)

  • Copyright Information: The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2019

  • Hardcover ISBN: 978-3-030-31466-8Published: 07 November 2019

  • eBook ISBN: 978-3-030-31467-5Published: 26 October 2019

  • Edition Number: 1

  • Number of Pages: IX, 130

  • Topics: US History, Imperialism and Colonialism, Legal History

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