the American negotiators cited the “conquest theory” as the legal rationale for confiscating Indian land without their consent. According to this line of argument, Native Americans had no rights because they were a “conquered people” who had sided with the British in the recent war and therefore had no legal standing, so by even consulting them the American government was doing them a favor. This first version of a coherent federal policy toward Native Americans, then, was thoroughly arbitrary, wholly one-sided, and brazenly imperialistic in the European mode.12
