Native American colonization

Abstract

The United States launched a multi-pronged genocide against the Native Americans in order to achieve Manifest Destiny. It was not political manipulation nor economic dependency nor cultural genocide alone that forced the exploitation of Native Americans—but all of them as a unified front. European powers first practiced exploitative colonialism, but it gradually transformed into settler colonialism under the United States. The federal government justified their actions with European imperialist policies and myths of savagery and “Noble Savages.” The Marshall Trilogy validated these justifications. Progressive reformers of the later nineteenth century deemed the previous treatment of Native Americans too harsh, so they misguidedly created boarding schools to Americanize the Indigenous population. This paper dissects the collective effort and intricate methods of economic, political, and cultural colonization in North America, and also includes a deep analysis of the moral and legal justification of settler colonialism.