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Indian Land Cessions

By Rick Diguette
  
The map at left is "doubtless" too small to read the fine print.  However, on the bigger image which you can access here http://www.floridahistory.com/chickasaw-land.html, the scale is 35 miles to one inch.  In other words, these cessions were huge.  What it seems Sutpen got hold of was a land cession, or a tract of land ceded to the Chickasaw by the United States government.  Whether someone could have actually obtained title to one of these land cessions, I don't know.  But as Faulkner is on record as saying, poets are not interested in the facts, they're interested in the truth.  And the truth is that we "gave" the Indians land on the one hand only to take it away on the other.

Comments

  1. TripplerJanuary 2, 2012 at 3:07 AM

    That's a point I was trying to make but failed to do in the other thread:

    Land cessions are (or were) in miles, farm leases are in acreage.

    Or so I thought from past readings.

    ReplyDelete
  2. James FergusonJanuary 19, 2012 at 10:17 AM

    I refreshed your map Rick. When adding photos best to save them to your computer first and then link them to the page through the browser, as it is easy to lose internet links.

    ReplyDelete

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