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Making Nebraska: The Pawnee, The United States, And The Transformation Of Space, 1803-1854, Ethan Reavis Bennett

Arts & Sciences Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Making Nebraska is a history of foreign relations and power politics between the Pawnee confederacy and the United States over the control and governance of the greater Platte Valley between 1803 and 1854. These groups never fought a war, but struggled over the meaning and use of power to control space at a transitional moment of North American history. While nominally part of the United States post-1803, the region remained outside the federal territorial system. Yet, this space was central to larger strategic and policy concerns over Indian Removal, territorial expansion, and the survival of the Pawnee as a nation. …