Vested Interests: Trusteeship and Native Dispossession in the United States Mohican economic hardship

economic hardship

are mostly unwritten

and Barry Lopez

Wesley Ballinger

but also into its capitalist economic system

Vested Interests: Trusteeship and Native Dispossession in the United States Mohican economic hardshipHow a system of colonial trusteeship converted Native wealth into settler capital. From the earliest days of its founding, the United States set its sights on Native territory. Amid better known "Indian wars," the federal government quietly built an empire by treaty, offering payments to Native peoples for their land. Routinely inadequate, these payments were nonetheless pivotal because federal officials chose not to deliver them as a lump sum.