Vested Interests: Trusteeship and Native Dispossession in the United States

WINNER OF THE BANCROFT PRIZE

How 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. Instead, the governm...