“This Natural Defect of Apprehension”: Native Americans and the Politics of Time in the Young United States

Abstract

In the years following the creation of the United States citizens of the young republic conducted a vigorous debate on Indigenous history, or rather on indigens and history. Some of the commentators who wrote about Native Americans during the long Federal Decade (1787-1800) acknowledged that they had a history and that indigenous traditions were helpful in tracing it; in their view Natives were people of and in history. Another significant group of historians and intellectuals held the exact ...