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"They Would Do As They Pleased, As They Had The Power": Gender Violence And The American Settler-Colonial Project, 1830-1890, Noelle Iati
Women's History Theses
This thesis investigates the role of gender violence and sexual terror in westward settler expansion of the United States in the nineteenth century. I posit that gender violence was not simply a symptom of war and colonization, but an integral piece of the American colonization strategy. Using studies of three locations during three different periods, I have found that the local, territorial, state, and federal governments all actively deployed sexual assault and other forms of gendered terror as methods of removing Indigenous peoples to reservations and rancherĂas, opening their lands to settlement and resource exploitation for the purpose of acquiring …