Abstract
In peace treaties with several Native peoples of the upper Midwest negotiated in 1824 and 1830, the United States and Native chiefs agreed to set aside three reservations for the children of Native women and American, Canadian and European traders and trappers. But the question of how the land within the Half Breed Tracts of Iowa, Minnesota and Nebraska was to be held was left open for three decades, reflecting a broader uncertainty about the nature of property rights in land, particularly land on the borderland between peoples and land on a frontier that seemed to many to be free for the taking. The delay in finally determining how the Half Breed Tracts were to be held—a determination that ended up dispossessing the people for whom the Tracts were intended—was the result of a conflict between notions that rights to land derived from labor on the land, from “discovery” of apparently available land, from legal decisions and from financial transactions.
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Notes
- 1.
Caleb Atwater, Remarks made on a Tour to Prairie du Chien : thence to Washington City, in 1829, (Columbus, Ohio: Scott & Wright, 1831) pp. 58–59. Charles Larpenteur, Forty Years a Fur Trader on the Upper Missouri, the personal narrative of Charles Larpenteur , 1833–1872 (New York: Francis P. Harper, 1898), pp. 5–6.
- 2.
Treaty with the Sauk and Foxes, August 4, 1824, 7 Statutes at Large, 229. Treaty of Prairie du Chien, July 15, 1830, 7. Stat. 328.
- 3.
For kinship patterns of the various Native nations see “Fox” (includes Sac), “Omaha-Ponca,” “Sioux,” Database for Indigenous Cultural Evolution, University of Missouri, http://dice.missouri.edu/index.shtml; Marjorie M. Schweitzer, “Otoe and Missouria,” in Handbook of North American Indians, vol. 13, part 1: Plains, ed. W. C. Sturtevant and R. J. DeMallie, (Washington: Smithsonian Institution, 2001) pp. 447–461; “The Clans” Ioway Cultural Institute, http://ioway.nativeweb.org/culture/clans.htm; Alice C. Fletcher and Francis La Flesche, The Omaha Tribe, Volume II. (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1911), p. 325; Mark Awakuni-Swetland, “Omaha,” Encyclopedia of World Cultures Supplement 2002 http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1G2-3458100076.html; Judith A. Boughter, Betraying the Omaha, 1790–1916 (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1998) pp. 67–68.
- 4.
For the Métis of the Red River, Assiniboine and Saskatchewan rivers see M. Giraud, Le Métis Canadien: Son Role dans I’Historie des Provinces de I’Ouest (Paris, Institut d’ethnologie, 1945) and The Métis in the Canadian West (Edmonton: University of Alberta Press, 1986); D. Bruce Sealy and Antoine S. Lussier, The Metis, Canada’s Forgotten People (Winnipeg: Pemmican Publications, 1975); Thomas Flanagan, Riel and the Rebellion: 1885 Reconsidered (Saskatoon: Western Producer Prairie Books, 1983); Gilles Martel, Le Messianisme de Louis Riel (Waterloo: Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 1984); Donald George McLean, Home from the Hill: A History of the Métis in Western Canada, 2nd ed. (Regina: Gabriel Dumont Institute of Native Studies and Applied Research, 1988). J.M. Bumsted, The Red River Rebellion (Winnipeg: Watson & Dwyer, 1996) and Trials and Tribulations: The Red River Settlement and the Emergence of Manitoba, 1811–1870 (Winnipeg: Great Plains Publications, 2003) and Nicole St.-Onge, Saint Laurent, Manitoba (Regina: University of Regina Press, 2004). Thomas N. Ingersoll, To Mix with Our White Brothers, Indian Mixed Bloods in the United States from Earliest Times to the Indian Removals (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2005), provides a comprehensive overview of the US experience. Jacqueline Peterson and Jennifer Brown, The New Peoples: Being and Becoming Metis in North America (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1985) and Nicole St-Onge, Carolyn Podruchny and Brenda Macdougall, Contours of a People: Metis Family, Mobility and History (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2012) focus on Metis/Creole ethnogenesis. Lucy Eldersveld Murphy, Great Lakes Creoles: A French-Indian Community on the Northern Borderlands, Prairie du Chien , 1750–1860 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014) and Peterson’s earlier “Ethnogenesis: The Settlement and Growth of a ‘New People’ in the Great Lakes Region, 1701–1815,” American Indian Culture and Research Journal, Vol. 6 (1982) pp. 23–64 discuss the Creole communities at Prairie du Chien, Wisconsin and other upper Midwest trading posts. Tanis C. Thorne, The Many Hands of My Relations: French and Indians on the Lower Missouri (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1996) describes the Missouri communities; Theda Perdue, in Mixed Blood Indians: Racial Construction in the Early South (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2005) the descendants of Cherokee, Creek, Chickasaw and Choctaw women and their British or US citizen husbands and warns us that the “language of blood” makes an assumption “that culture follows ‘blood,’” and that the urge to categorize by race or ethnicity assumes the kind of shared experience that creates community. Pp. x, 70–100, 127. While there is no census data on mixed-race people of the Mississippi and Missouri River valleys, a dozen individuals were identified in the Treaty with the Quapaw (August 24 1824), 7 Stat. 232; forty-three in the Treaty with the Osage (June 2 1825) 7 Stat. 240; twenty-five in the Treaty with the Kansas (June 3 1825) 7 Stat. 244; twenty-nine families and twenty-one individuals in the Treaty with the Chippewa (August 5 1826) 7 Stat. 290; twenty-three in the Treaty with the Potawatomie (October 16 1826), 7 Stat.296; eleven in the Treaty with the Chippewa (July 29, 1829) 7 Stat. 320; sixteen in the Treaty with the Pawnee (September 24 1857) 11 Stat.728, and fifteen in the Treaty with the Ponca (March 12 1858) 12 Stat. 997.
- 5.
William B. Scott, In Pursuit of Happiness, American Conceptions of Property from the Seventeenth to the Twentieth Century (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1977), p. 4; Michal Jan Rozbicki, Culture and Liberty in the Age of the American Revolution (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2011) p. 116; Richard N. L. Andrews; Managing the Environment, Managing Ourselves: A History of American Environmental Policy (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2006) p. 34; John C. Weaver, The Great Land Rush and The Making of the Modern World, 1650–1900 (Montreal: McGill-Queens University Press, 2003). Joseph W. Singer argues “The family home is the core of the American Dream … property is central to the way we Americans define ourselves as a people,” in “Democratic Estates: Property Law in a Free and Democratic Society,” Cornell Law Review, Vol. 94 (2009), p. 1010; Ellen Holmes Pearson argues “The drive for individual property ownership proved to be too firmly engrained” to be subordinated to considerations of the common good in Remaking Custom: Law and Identity in the Early American Republic (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2011). The view that American independence was the work of men who believed in an exclusive, individual ownership right in land has long been the dominant theme in the historiography of the early republic as in, for example, Jennifer Nedelsky; Private Property and the Limits of American Constitutionalism. The Madisonian Framework and its Legacy (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990); Forrest McDonald, Novus Ordo Seclorum: The Intellectual Origins of the Constitution (Lawrence, Kans.: University Press of Kansas, 1985); Willi Paul Adams, The First American Constitutions, Republican Ideology and the Making of State Constitutions in the Revolutionary Era (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1980); William E. Nelson, Americanization of the Common Law: The Impact of Legal Change on Massachusetts Society, 1760–1830 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1975); Bernard Bailyn, The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1967); Carl Becker, The Declaration of Independence, A Study in the History of Political Ideas (New York: Harcourt, Brace & Co., 1922). The idea that Constitutional government was founded on a concept of exclusive property in land as a superior right is a theme of Richard Epstein’s Takings: Private Property and the Power of Eminent Domain (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1985) and James W. Ely, Jr., The Guardian of Every Other Right: A Constitutional History of Property Rights (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007). This view is challenged by Benito Arrunada, “Property Enforcement as Organized Consent,” Journal of Law, Economics, and Organization, Vol. 19 (2003) pp. 401–44, Harry N. Scheiber, “Property Law, Expropriation, and Resource Allocation by Government: The United States, 1789–1910,” Journal of Economic History, Vol. 33, No. 1, (March 1973), pp. 232–51; J.F. Hart, “Colonial Land Use Law and Its Significance for Modern Takings Doctrine,” Harvard Law Review, Vol. 109, No. 6, (April 1996), pp. 1252–1300 and William M. Treanor, “The Original Understanding of the Takings Clause and the Political Process,” Columbia Law Review Vol. 95, 1995, pp. 782–887, while Allan Greer, Property and Dispossession: Natives, Empires and Land in Early Modern North America (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018) explores the complexity of both Native and settler ideas of land tenure.
- 6.
The historiography of settler colonialism focuses on what Patrick Wolfe has called the “elimination of the native,” and a “territoriality [that] is settler colonialism’s specific, irreducible element,” and argues that the “breaking-down of native title into alienable individual freeholds,” as its essential feature, Patrick Wolfe, “Colonialism and the Elimination of the Native,” Journal of Genocide Research, Vol. 8, No. 4 (Dec. 2006) pp. 387–409 and “Land, Labor, and Difference: Elementary Structures of Race,” The American Historical Review, Vol. 106, No. 3 (Jun., 2001), pp. 866–905; L. Veracini, The Settler Colonial Present. (London: Palgrave Macmillan 2015) and Settler Colonialism: A Theoretical Overview (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010); Fiona Bateman and Lionel Pilkington, Studies in settler colonialism: Politics, Identity and culture (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011); T. Banivanua Mar and P. Edmonds (editors). Making Settler Colonial Space: Perspectives on Race, Place and Identity (New York: Palgrave Macmillan 2010), Cole Harris, “How did colonialism dispossess? Comments from an edge of empire,” Annals of the Association of American Geographers, Vol. 94, (2004) pp. 165–182.
- 7.
Manifest Destiny and its impact on Native Americans is explored in David Maybury, Theodore Macdonald and Biorn Maybury-Lewis (editors) Manifest Destinies and Indigenous Peoples (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2009); Amy S. Greenberg, Manifest Destiny and Territorial Expansion: A Brief History with Documents (New York: Bedford/St. Martins, 2011); Reginald Horsman, Race and Manifest Destiny: The Origins of American Racial Anglo-Saxonism (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1981). Conquest and its ideology is the central theme in Francis Jennings, The Invasion of America: Indians, Colonialism and the Cant of Conquest (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1975); changes in legal institutions and rules are the focus of Stuart Banner, How the Indians Lost Their Land: Law and Power on the Frontier (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2005).
- 8.
Squatters won protection in Section 31 of Tennessee’s first state constitution http://teva.contentdm.oclc.org/landmarkdocs/transcripts/90.transcript.pdf Vermont and Virginia enacted did the same in Laws of Vermont to 1807, Randolph, 1808, Vol. 1, pp. 204–8; Hening’s Statutes at Large, Richmond, 1821, Vol. 9, p. 349. The US Congress enacted a series of laws allowing squatters to preempt absentee holders’ claims (2 Stat. 797; 4 Stat. 420; 4 Stat. 496; 4 Stat. 503; 4 Stat. 603; 4 Stat. 663; 4 Stat. 678 and 5 Stat. 453). Court rulings protecting squatters’ holdings include Fail and Nabb v. Goodtitle, 1 Ill. 201 (1826: Supreme Court of Illinois); Poindexter v. Henderson 1 Miss. 176 (1824: Supreme Court of Mississippi); Barton’s Lessee v. Shall, 7 Tenn. 214, 232 (1823: Supreme Court of Tennessee); Childress v. McGehee; 1 Minor 131 (1823: Alabama Supreme Court); Bowles v. Sharp 7 Ky. 550; (1817: Kentucky Court of Appeals); Franklin et al. v. Franklin et al., 14 Johns. 527 (1817: Supreme Court of Judicature, New York); Lessee of Bonnet v. Devebaugh and Smith, 3 Binn. 175 (1810: Pennsylvania Supreme Court); Cheney v. Ringgold, 2 H. & J. 87 (1807: Maryland Supreme Court) and Borretts v. Turner, 3 N.C. 273, 274 (1800: North Carolina Supreme Court).
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Borretts v. Turner, 3 N.C. 273, 274 (1800: North Carolina Supreme Court).
Bowles v. Sharp 7 Ky. 550; (1817: Kentucky Court of Appeals).
Cheney v. Ringgold, 2 H. & J. 87 (1807: Maryland Supreme Court).
Childress v. McGehee; 1 Minor 131 (1823: Alabama Supreme Court).
Fail and Nabb v. Goodtitle, 1 Ill. 201 (1826: Supreme Court of Illinois)
Franklin et. al. v. Franklin et. al., 14 Johns. 527 (1817: Supreme Court of Judicature, New York).
Lessee of Bonnet v. Devebaugh and Smith, 3 Binn. 175 (1810: Pennsylvania Supreme Court).
Poindexter v. Henderson 1 Miss. 176 (1824: Supreme Court of Mississippi).
Laws of Vermont to 1807, Randolph, Vermont, 1808.
Hening’s Statutes at Large, Richmond, Virginia 1821.
Treaty with the Sauk and Foxes, August 4, 1824, 7 Statutes at Large, 229.
Treaty with the Quapaw (August 24 1824), 7 Stat. 232.
Treaty with the Osage (June 2 1825) 7 Stat. 240.
Treaty with the Kansas (June 3 1825) 7 Stat. 244.
Treaty with the Chippewa (August 5 1826) 7 Stat. 290.
Treaty with the Potawatomie (October 16 1826), 7 Stat. 296.
Treaty with the Chippewa (July 29, 1829) 7 Stat. 320.
Treaty of Prairie du Chien, July 15, 1830, 7. Stat. 328.
Treaty with the Pawnee (September 24 1857) 11 Stat. 728.
Treaty with the Ponca (March 12 1858) 12 Stat. 997.
Adams, Willi Paul, The First American Constitutions, Republican Ideology and the Making of State Constitutions in the Revolutionary Era (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1980).
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Arrunada, Benito, “Property Enforcement As Organized Consent,” Journal of Law, Economics, and Organization, Vol. 19 (2003) pp. 401–44.
Atwater, Caleb, Remarks made on a Tour to Prairie du Chien: thence to Washington City, in 1829, (Columbus, Ohio: Scott & Wright, 1831).
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———., Trials and Tribulations: The Red River Settlement and the Emergence of Manitoba, 1811–1870 (Winnipeg: Great Plains Publications, 2003).
Ely, James W. Jr., The Guardian of Every Other Right: A Constitutional History of Property Rights (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007.
Epstein, Richard, Takings: Private Property and the Power of Eminent Domain (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1985).
Flanagan, Thomas, Riel and the Rebellion: 1885 Reconsidered (Saskatoon: Western Producer Prairie Books, 1983).
Fletcher, Alice C. and La Flesche, Francis, The Omaha Tribe, Volume II, (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1911).
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———., The Métis in the Canadian West (Edmonton: University of Alberta Press, 1986).
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St.-Onge, Nicole, Saint Laurent, Manitoba (Regina: University of Regina Press, 2004).
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———, “Land, Labor, and Difference: Elementary Structures of Race,” The American Historical Review, Vol. 106, No. 3 (2001), pp. 866–905.
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Ress, D. (2019). Introduction: A Caught-Between People and an Undefined Land. In: The Half Breed Tracts in Early National America. Palgrave Pivot, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-31467-5_1
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