Its Native American heritage month and so, at least once a week for the month of november Im going to post a status, which aims to contradict what is taught by many grade schools across the county. I know that many of my statuses will be read by my native friends; however, I encourage my non naive friends to educate themselves about native for at least one day a week. The first status remarks on land acquisition by the Louisiana purchase: What we acquired from Napoleon in the Louisiana Purchase was not real estate, for practically all of the ceded territory that was not privately owned by the Spanish and French settlers was still owned by the Indians, and the property rights of all the inhabitants were safeguarded by the terms of the treaty of cession. What we did acquire from Napoleon was not the land, which was not his to sell, but simply the power to govern and to tax, the same sort of power that we gained with the acquisition of Puerto Rico or the Virgin Islands a century later. It may help us to appreciate the distinction between a sale of land and the transfer of governmental power if we note that after paying Napoleon 15 million dollars for the cession of political authority over the Louisiana Territory we proceeded to pay the Indians tribes of the ceded territory more than twenty times this sum for such lands in their possession as they were willing to sell. - Original Indian Title, Felix S. Cohen, Yale Law School 1947.
Posted on: Tue, 04 Nov 2014 00:45:29 +0000
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