Encyclopedia of United States Indian Policy and Law (repost)

In 1987 ethnohistorian James Axtell published the article “Colonial America without the Indians: Counterfactual Reflections,” in which he imagined a North America bereft of humans at the time of European exploration and settlement.

The purpose of his piece was to demonstrate how vital the Native peoples of the continent had been to the history and development of the United States. Axtell’s imaginative contention could also be extended to an exploration of the relationship between the story of U.S. Indian policy and the general history of the United States.That history is not only important in its own right; it is also interwoven with the political, economic, legal, cultural, and social histories of the United States—which would have developed in other ways.
The United States would be a very different nation today if its government had not had the responsibility of dealing with the tribal nations. Some might see the history of the relations between the United States and American Indians as a long tragedy in which the former subjugated, dispossessed, and annihilated the culture of the latter. Concomitant with this U.S. assault on Native land holdings, political rights, and culture, however, is a story of triumphant persistence. Despite more than
two centuries of attacks on their political, territorial, and cultural integrity, the Native peoples of the United States have survived, endured, and, in some cases, returned to prosperity. Today,many Native peoples are experiencing a societal renascence, thanks to their demands that they be allowed to fulfill their own destinies.The Encyclopedia of United States Indian Policy and Law attempts to document both the tragedies and this Native resilience.