An Indigenous Peoples History of the United States Ortiz

SIX

THE LAST OF THE MOHICANS

AND ANDREW JACKSON'S

WHITE REPUBLIC

The settler's work is to make even dreams of liberty

impossible fo r the native. The native's work is to imagine

all possible methods fo r destroying the settler.

-Frantz Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth

In 180 3, the Jefferson administration, without consulting any af­
fected Indigenous nation, purchased the Louisiana Territory from
Napoleon Bonaparte. Louisiana comprised 828, 000 square miles,
and its addition doubled the size of the United States. The territory
encompassed all or part of multiple Indigenous nations, including
the Sioux, Cheyenne, Arapaho, Crow, Pawnee, Osage, and Coman­
che, among other peoples of the bison. It also included the area that
would soon be designated Indian Te rritory (Oklahoma), the site of
relocation of Indigenous peoples from west of the Mississippi. Fif­
teen future states would emerge from the taking: all of present-day
Arkansas, Missouri, Iowa, Oklahoma, Kansas, and Nebraska; Min­
nesota west of the Mississippi; most of North and South Dakota;
northeastern New Mexico and North Texas; the portions of Mon­
tana, Wyoming, and Colorado east of the Continental Divide; and
Louisiana west of the Mississippi River, including the city of New Or­
leans. The territory pressed against lands occupied by Spain, includ­
ing Te xas and all the territory west of the Continental Divide to the
Pacific Ocean. These would soon be next on the US annexation list. 1
At the time, many US Americans saw the purchase as a strate­
gic means of averting war with France while securing commerce

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