A Note on Economic Depressions and Native American Opportunities

Abstract

Contrary to its portrayal in popular culture, the territorial expansion of the United States was an expensive and highly organized undertaking. Wealthy financiers worked together with land speculators, well-capitalized grain and cotton cultivators, railroad companies, and state and federal governments to expel Native Americans from their homes, sell off their lands, produce marketable commodities thereon, and transport these goods to market centers. The capitalist structure of American settler-colonialism allowed investors to sustain periods of rapid territorial and economic growth, but when they collectively lost confidence in their investments' profitability, both the financial markets and the demand for Native lands crashed. A closer look at the depressions following the Panics of 1819, 1837, 1857, and 1873 reveals that, in most cases, governmental pressure on Indigenous Americans slackened during these downturns, giving many Native communities the opportunity peacefully to resist federal troops and agents, or otherwise protect themselves from dispossession.