Nature of Sale
The historian James Loewen is among those who assert that the United States purchased only France's claim to the Louisiana Territory, as the land belonged to the tribes who inhabited the area. In his view, the US acquired the lands slowly throughout the nineteenth century by purchases from individual Native American tribes and by wars against them. The question is discussed at length in the article on Aboriginal title in the United States, as well as in articles on the American Indian Wars and the U.S. Supreme Court case Johnson v. M'Intosh.
The issue of the legitimacy of the Louisiana Purchase is similar to that of the 1867 Alaska Purchase. In that case, the land rights were resolved more than 100 years later with the 1971 Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act (ANCSA). Some Alaska Natives continue to resent the Alaska Federation of Natives' lack of legitimacy to act on their behalf. See also Indian Land Claims Settlements for other cases where native land title claims were extinguished with monetary compensation.
Read more about this topic: Louisiana Purchase
Famous quotes containing the words nature of, nature and/or sale:
“The nature of language may determine what most people say, but I always speak my own meaning.”
—Mason Cooley (b. 1927)
“So immense are the claims on a mother, physical claims on her bodily and brain vigor, and moral claims on her heart and thoughts, that she cannot ... meet them all and find any large margin beyond for other cares and work. She serves the community in the very best and highest way it is possible to do, by giving birth to healthy children, whose physical strength has not been defrauded, and to whose moral and mental nature she can give the whole of her thoughts.”
—Frances Power Cobbe (1822–1904)
“People buy their necessities in shops and have to pay dearly for them because they have to assist in paying for what is also on sale there but only rarely finds purchasers: the luxury and amusement goods. So it is that luxury continually imposes a tax on the simple people who have to do without it.”
—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)