Asa Kowals-Rose | Blog for RFILP

These chapters discussed several disastrous court decisions from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries and how they contributed to the subjugation of Indian communities. Echo-Hawk first discusses the various Indian wars that took place throughout the 1800s, and points out that despite many decades of bloodshed, it was not military defeat that robbed American Indians of their land and culture; it was a combination of dishonest transactions and inconsistent legal reasoning.

What these chapters made clear to me was that the legislation, court decisions, and military force worked in tandem to fulfill manifest destiny at the expense of Indians. The Supreme Court’s ruling in Lone Wolf v. Hitchcock gave full control of Indian’s lives and land to Congress; Congress in turn relied on courts to uphold its legislation, and could count on American military power to enforce it. While the Supreme Court did legitimize the use of force by recognizing the law of conquest, the perpetrators of violence against Indians did not wait for judicial authorization to commit atrocities, as they felt secure in their ability to do so without legal consequence. At the end of the day, complicated questions of legality meant little to those who had the necessary hard power to ignore the law. This is certainly true in modern times as well; Echo-Hawk points out that the 2003 invasion of Iraq was illegal under international law, but that the United States’ military preeminence allowed its forces to proceed with impunity.

Nitpicking time: I noticed a minor inaccuracy in chapter eight. While discussing the Code of Indian Offenses, Echo-Hawk identifies Edward Teller as the Interior Secretary responsible for it. That secretary’s name was actually Henry M. Teller; Edward Teller was an Hungarian-born scientist who worked on the Manhattan Project, and eventually came to be known as “the father of the hydrogen bomb.” I had previously skimmed the latter Teller’s book, The Legacy of Hiroshima, and recognized his name when I came across it in this week’s text. I thought it an odd coincidence that he shared his name with an Interior Secretary, and upon researching the matter, discovered Echo-Hawk’s error.