| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 95.2

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| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 95.2 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

American Indians and State Law: Sovereignty, Race, and Citizenship, 1790–1880. By Deborah A. Rosen. (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2007. xx, 340 pp. $55.00, ISBN 978-0-8032-3968-5.)

Legend has that in response to the 1832 U.S. Supreme Court decision that declared unconstitutional Georgia's extension of its laws into Cherokee territory, President Andrew Jackson said, "John Marshall has made his decision, now let him enforce it." Those words illustrate a truth about U.S.-Indian relations, especially in the republic's early period. While the Constitution and the Indian Trade and Intercourse Acts designated the federal government the ultimate governing authority concerning Native Americans, federal neglect allowed the states to devise a good deal of U.S. Indian policy. This is where Deborah A. Rosen's excellent book steps in, offering a sophisticated study of state-level Indian policy from 1790–1880, traced through documents of state and territorial legislatures, state court decisions, and state constitutional conventions. This study includes almost every extant state and territory, with Georgia, New York, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, and New Mexico receiving the most attention. Rosen's research demonstrates "two main themes...the decentralized nature of much of American Indian policy, and the gradual local assertion of direct rule over Indians" up to the late nineteenth century (p. xi). The book is organized in three parts—sovereignty, race, and citizenship— and each shows how state-level political developments shaped American policy toward, and views of, Native Americans.

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