Expenses of Sovereignty

Abstract

When criminal law and command failed, federal officials came to rely on federal finance to try to secure peace between Natives and U.S. citizens, as this chapter depicts. Both Native and white claimants demanded that the federal government compensate them for the violence they suffered at each others’ hands. Increasingly, the federal government did so, paying both Natives and whites for the constant murders, horse thefts, and abduction of enslaved human property that plagued both federal territories. Still more money went to the territories to satisfy Native leaders’ expectations for what federal officials called “presents” and to fund the expensive military “protection” that territorial citizens demanded. Federal officials reluctantly spent these increasingly large sums of money to secure the doubtful allegiances of these borderlands residents; their goal was to foster dependence on the federal government. Arguably, they failed. Native leaders espoused a gendered rhetoric of poverty and weakness, but they successfully extracted federal funds precisely because of their considerable power. Constitutionally, the territories were dependencies of the United States, but territorial citizens rejected any suggestion of subordination, demanding vast sums for militia actions—even when at odds with federal law—as part of the federal government’s obligation to protect its citizens. In the process, both sets of claimants relied on the federal government as the venue to make claims and redress grievances. But only Natives were tagged with the dependent label even as their white neighbors proved far more effective at extracting federal largesse, prefiguring later dynamics in the rise of the national welfare state.