Reviewed by:

• Unworthy Republic: The Dispossession of Native Americans and the Road to Indian Territory by Claudio Saunt
• Michael Leroy Oberg

The pages of Claudio Saunt's Unworthy Republic: The Dispossession of Native Americans and the Road to Indian Territory echo with cries of injustice from the many thousands of Native people dispossessed and expelled from their homelands in the second quarter of the nineteenth century. This challenging and very important book will force even those historians who find "Indian Removal" a familiar topic to reassess their thinking. This is the best book on removal that I have ever read.

To begin with, Saunt rejects the term "Indian Removal" because "it conveys no sense of coercion or violence" (p. xiii). He avoids ethnic cleansing and genocide as well, though he is well aware that white Americans acted on occasion with genocidal intent. In their place he favors deportation, expulsion, and extermination.

Three arguments rest at the heart of Unworthy Republic. First, "the state-administered mass expulsion of indigenous people was unprecedented" (p. xv). Though relocations were a fact of life for Native peoples, what occurred in the 1830s was different in terms of its size, scope, system, and nature. A related argument is that the mass expulsion "was a turning point for indigenous peoples and for the United States" (p. xvii). Thereafter it was the military might of the United States that maintained a moving frontier for white Americans "by killing native people or concentrating them on marginal lands" (p. xvii). Finally, Saunt argues that this deportation was not inevitable, whatever the policy's apologists or subsequent historians contend. The Constitution's three-fifths clause provided the votes needed to enact the Removal Bill in 1830.

Indigenous peoples wanted to remain on their lands and asserted that they had the right to do so. Well before gold was discovered in northwest Georgia, well before the Cherokee Nation wrote its national constitution, a small group of southern planters hatched a plot to drive Native peoples across the Mississippi River by rendering life in their homelands unbearable. Andrew Jackson, whose violence toward Native peoples is well described, abetted this program to transform autonomous Native American communities into slave labor camps.

In stunning detail, Saunt describes the mechanics of expulsion in all its violence and chicanery. He demonstrates how no white southerners took seriously Jackson's maudlin claims that deportation was a benevolent solution to a disordered frontier. The president's appointees, as wretched a crew as one will ever encounter, openly cheated Native peoples, ignored provisions in treaties that allowed Indians to remain on their lands, and did little to effectively curtail the ravages of expulsion, such as cholera, cold, and the lack of adequate provision.

Saunt also brilliantly illuminates the machinations that financed the expulsion of Native peoples. Bankers in New York and Boston jumped "when the opportunity arose to invest in the dispossession of native peoples." They made a killing. "These men," Saunt writes, "were the North's equivalent of southern [End Page 340] planters. While one practiced slavery and the other investment banking, both groups were equally indifferent to the fate of indigenous Americans and the slaves who would replace them" (p. 187).

Native peoples resisted those forces that sought their extermination, and Saunt tells their stories well. Importantly, he points out that this resistance exposed the lie in the government's claims. In the end, "the difference between deportation and extermination was never as clear as U.S. officials liked to believe," Saunt writes, and "the putative benevolent goal of moving indigenous Americans to the nation's outermost margins became the excuse to expel them by force of arms or to kill them" (p. 232). Soldiers, militiamen, and vigilantes "were merely substantiating what Jacksonian experts had predicted all along: Native peoples who remained in the East would be exterminated" (p. 233). White men wanted the land, and slave labor camps took root quickly...

审核人：

• 不值得的共和国：克劳迪奥·桑特（Claudio Saunt）对美国原住民的剥夺和通往印度领土的道路
• 迈克尔·勒罗伊·奥伯格（Michael Leroy Oberg）

克劳迪奥·桑特（Claudio Saunt）的《不值得的共和国：对美洲原住民的剥夺和通往印度领土的道路》的页面呼应着19世纪下半叶被剥夺和驱逐出其家园的成千上万土著人民的不公正呼声。这本具有挑战性且非常重要的书甚至会迫使那些发现“印第安人撤离”这一熟悉话题的历史学家重新评估他们的思想。这是我读过的关于清除的最好的书。

首先，萨恩特拒绝“印度撤离”一词，因为“它没有传达任何胁迫或暴力感”（第十三页）。他也避免种族清洗和种族灭绝，尽管他知道美国白人偶尔会出于种族灭绝的意图行事。他赞成驱逐，驱逐和灭绝他们。

不值得的共和国的核心在于三个论点。首先，“国家对土著人民的大规模驱逐是史无前例的”（第十五页）。尽管搬迁是土著人民的生活事实，但在1830年代发生的搬迁在规模，范围，系统和性质方面却有所不同。一个相关的论点是，大规模驱逐“是土著人民和美国的转折点”（第十七页）。此后，正是美国的军事力量“通过杀死土著人民或将他们集中在边缘土地上”来维持白人美国人不断发展的疆界（第十七页）。最后，萨恩特认为，无论政策的辩护者或随后的历史学家争论什么，这种驱逐都是不可避免的。宪法的五分之三条款为1830年颁布《免除法案》提供了所需的选票。

土著人民希望保留在自己的土地上，并声称他们有权这样做。在佐治亚州西北部发现金矿的很早之前，即切诺基国家（Cherokee Nation）制定其国家宪法之前，一小群南部种植园主孵化了一块土地，使土著人民的生活难以忍受，从而驱赶他们穿越密西西比河。安德鲁·杰克逊（Andrew Jackson）对土著人民的暴力行为得到了充分描述，他怂恿了该计划，将自治的美洲原住民社区转变为奴隶劳工营地。

桑特（Saunt）用惊人的细节描述了驱逐所有暴力行为和chi亵行为的方法。他证明了没有白人南方人认真对待杰克逊的轻描淡写的说法，即驱逐出境是对无序边疆的仁慈解决方案。总统的任命人员曾遭遇船员的痛苦，他们将遭遇一次公开的欺骗，公开地欺骗了土著人民，无视条约中允许印第安人留在其土地上的规定，并没有有效地遏制霍乱，寒冷和流浪等驱逐行为。缺乏足够的准备。

萨恩特还出色地阐明了驱逐土著人民的阴谋诡计。纽约和波士顿的银行家跳了起来，“当有机会投资于对土著人民的剥夺时”。他们杀了人。萨恩特写道：“这些人相当于北方[End 340]南部种植者。一个人从事奴隶制和其他投资银行业务，这两个群体对土著美国人和将要取代他们的奴隶的命运同样无动于衷。 ”（第187页）。

土著人民抵抗了那些寻求灭绝的力量，萨恩特很好地讲述了他们的故事。重要的是，他指出，这种抵制暴露了政府主张中的谎言。最后，萨恩特写道：“驱逐和灭绝之间的区别从来没有像美国官员所希望的那样清晰明了，而将原住民移居到美国最外层边缘的公认的宏伟目标成为借口驱逐他们的借口。武器还是杀死他们”（第232页）。士兵，民兵和民兵“只是在证实杰克逊主义专家一直以来的预测：灭绝在东方的土著人民”（第233页）。白人想要这片土地，奴隶劳教所迅速扎根。