From the Indian side of the imperial equation, the new American policy looked and felt incomprehensible. Nearly three-quarters of the region east of the Mississippi remained Indian Country after the war, occupied by approximately thirty tribes long accustomed to regarding the land as a gift from the Great Spirit. It had never occurred to them that this expansive tract could be owned by any mortal, much less that control over it could be determined by men an ocean away, who had never hunted or even walked upon its ground, who had only written their names on a piece of parchment.
