Читать книгу Lost Worlds of 1863. Relocation and Removal of American Indians in the Central Rockies and the Greater Southwest онлайн
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Throughout all of this, because the Commerce Clause (Section 8) of the US Constitution reserved to the federal government the right to regulate commercial relationships and land ownership “… with the Indian Tribes,” questions and issues concerning the use and ownership of the lands of the native peoples was left up to the bureaucrats and politicians in Washington, D.C. to decide. This has been the situation from 1790 onward to today.1
By the nineteenth century Europeans and Americans began to arrange treaties between themselves or with local rulers, and from the early to mid-nineteenth century mapmaking and the map were essential to this process. The survey maps of the General Land Office made relevant the shape of the territory, and that shape would eventually gain tremendous political importance.
Akin to the Cotton Kingdom, the Greater Southwest was surveyed and mapped before the conquering troops arrived, only to be followed by gold seekers, farmers, entrepreneurs, Protestant missionaries, and Mormon settlers. And the US government was very busy negotiating treaties with Mexicans, Navajos, Shoshones and others. Treaty-making had taken on a new role, that of paving the way for settlement and development of indigenous lands, and the formalization of the subordination of tribal peoples. While the treaties may have failed from the indigenous perspective, these accords did meet the needs of the newcomers.9