The Indian Question

Francis Amasa Walker served as Commissioner of Indian Affairs in 1871, the very year Congress declared that tribal nations would no longer be recognized as independent entities. He wrote this account in the aftermath of that seismic shift, making this more than a policy treatise, it is a first-hand reckoning with the consequences of ending tribal sovereignty. Walker traces the arc of American Indian policy from first contact through thetreaty era's collapse, exposing how decades of formal recognition gave way to a declaration that effectively erased tribal nations from the calculus of foreign policy. His perspective is unique: an economist and administrator who believed the existing system was broken, yet who operated within the machinery implementing its dissolution. The book does not offer redemption, Walker writes from inside the federal apparatus, but it provides an invaluable window into how one official understood what was being lost. For readers interested in American history, Native American studies, or the formation of federal Indian law, this is a primary source that reveals both the ideological frameworks and human consequences behind a pivotal moment in the treatment of indigenous peoples.