A complex and troubled history defines the borders of upstate New York beyond the physical boundaries of its rivers and lakes. The United States and the state were often deceptive in their territory negotiations with the Iroquois Six Nations. Amidst the growing quest for more land among settlers and then fledgling Americans, the Indian nations attempted to maintain their autonomy. Yet state land continued to encroach the Six Nations. Local historian Cindy Amrhein takes a close and critical view of these transactions. Evidence of dubious deals, bribes, faulty surveys and coerced signatures may help explain why many of the Nations now feel they were cheated out of their territory.
The landmark Oneida Supreme Court decisions of 1974 and 1985 testify to the fact that the Iroquois' day in court has finally arrived. Although Indian petitions to regain their shrinking land base have generally caught the non-Indian public by surprise, land rights have been an issue for the Iroquois for the past two-hundred years. This book provides a balanced appraisal of the land claims made by several of the Iroquois tribes. By drawing upon the viewpoints of those who have a direct stake in the land claims' outcome-Iroquois, attorneys representing or defending against the claims, expert witnesses—and those who have extensive knowledge of the controversy, this book reveals the complexity of the issues. While there is no easy way to resolve these claims, the uniquely qualified contributors stress that a negotiated settlement is preferable to a litigated one. The fact that these cases have had to be brought to court, even to the Supreme Court, is evidence of the seriousness of the issues involved. This timely book strikes a balance among the various parties to the land disputes, proving an invaluable resource to academics, students, legal professionals, policymakers, and the public at large.
The untold story of how the Chiricahua Apache tribe won a $22 million settlement against the U.S. government that had imprisoned tribal members for 23 years. In 1947 President Truman established the Indian Claims Commission. WILD JUSTICE is a history of that extraordinary tribunal and the efforts of Native American tribes to obtain restitution from it.
Winner - 2023 John Brinkerhoff Jackson Book Prize, UVA Center for Cultural Landscapes With more than eight hundred sprawling green acres in the middle of one of the world’s densest cities, Central Park is an urban masterpiece. Designed in the middle of the nineteenth century by the landscape architects Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux, it is a model for city parks worldwide. But before it became Central Park, the land was the site of farms, businesses, churches, wars, and burial grounds—and home to many different kinds of New Yorkers. This book is the authoritative account of the place that would become Central Park. From the first Dutch family to settle on the land through the political crusade to create America’s first major urban park, Sara Cedar Miller chronicles two and a half centuries of history. She tells the stories of Indigenous hunters, enslaved people and enslavers, American patriots and British loyalists, the Black landowners of Seneca Village, Irish pig farmers, tavern owners, Catholic sisters, Jewish protesters, and more. Miller unveils a British fortification and camp during the Revolutionary War, a suburban retreat from the yellow fever epidemics at the turn of the nineteenth century, and the properties that a group of free Black Americans used to secure their right to vote. Tales of political chicanery, real estate speculation, cons, and scams stand alongside democratic idealism, the striving of immigrants, and powerfully human lives. Before Central Park shows how much of the history of early America is still etched upon the landscapes of Central Park today.
Winner of the 2021 Bancroft Prize and the 2021 Ridenhour Book Prize Finalist for the 2020 National Book Award for Nonfiction Named a Top Ten Best Book of 2020 by the Washington Post and Publishers Weekly and a New York Times Critics' Top Book of 2020 A masterful and unsettling history of “Indian Removal,” the forced migration of Native Americans across the Mississippi River in the 1830s and the state-sponsored theft of their lands. In May 1830, the United States launched an unprecedented campaign to expel 80,000 Native Americans from their eastern homelands to territories west of the Mississippi River. In a firestorm of fraud and violence, thousands of Native Americans lost their lives, and thousands more lost their farms and possessions. The operation soon devolved into an unofficial policy of extermination, enabled by US officials, southern planters, and northern speculators. Hailed for its searing insight, Unworthy Republic transforms our understanding of this pivotal period in American history.
Part of the Iroquois Confederacy, the Oneida Indians once controlled large areas of what is now upstate New York. Over the years they have lost their vast holdings to the state of New York, despite their protests concerning what they felt to be unjust seizures and sales of tribal lands. The Oneida Land Claims offers a forceful account of the long and ardent fight by George Shattuck, a partner in the law firm representing the Oneida Indian Nation from 1965 to 1977, to get the Oneidas their day in court. He describes his specific, legal strategy in winning a landmark judgment from the U.S. Supreme Court in 1974 that the Oneidas still owned land taken illegally by New York State in 1795. Because negotiations are still taking place, the Oneidas have yet to receive compensation; but Shattuck's legal battle has helped to create a new body of American Indian law that has affected subsequent Native American land claims cases throughout the eastern United States.
The landmark Oneida Supreme Court decisions of 1974 and 1985 testify to the fact that the Iroquois' day in court has finally arrived. Although Indian petitions to regain their shrinking land base have generally caught the non-Indian public by surprise, land rights have been an issue for the Iroquois for the past two-hundred years. This book provides a balanced appraisal of the land claims made by several of the Iroquois tribes. By drawing upon the viewpoints of those who have a direct stake in the land claims' outcome-Iroquois, attorneys representing or defending against the claims, expert witnesses--and those who have extensive knowledge of the controversy, this book reveals the complexity of the issues. While there is no easy way to resolve these claims, the uniquely qualified contributors stress that a negotiated settlement is preferable to a litigated one. The fact that these cases have had to be brought to court, even to the Supreme Court, is evidence of the seriousness of the issues involved. This timely book strikes a balance among the various parties to the land disputes, proving an invaluable resource to academics, students, legal professionals, policymakers, and the public at large.
