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Johnson & Graham's Lessee v McIntosh
Trigger warning. This case sets the basis for US land law, and is the clearest articulation of indigenous dispossession in US law (and perhaps law elsewhere.)
As you read this case, consider this line from Moby Dick:
Herman Melville, Moby-Dick
p. 375 (1922) [1892]
What was America in 1492 but a Loose-Fish, in which Columbus struck the Spanish standard by way of waifing it for his royal master and mistress? What was Poland to the Czar? What Greece to the Turk? What India to England? What at last will Mexico be to the United States? All Loose-Fish.
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