'They fell upon their own knees, and then upon the Aborigines.' The old quip about the Puritans who settled colonial New England offers a succinct and not inaccurate summary of white-Indian relations in the United States. Despite the twists and turns of official policy - from Thomas Jefferson's efforts to assimilate Indians by teaching them to farm (even though they had been doing so for centuries), to Andrew Jackson's Indian removal, Grant's 'peace policy' and Roosevelt's Indian New Deal - the fact is that whites from the outset coveted Indian land and eventually succeeded in acquiring almost all of it, sweeping aside periodic resistance with brutally effective violence.

LRB 9 February 2006 | PDF Download