Territorial indirect rule embraces the customary authority and law of institutional indirect rule but binds these to tribal homelands. The innovation that brought about territorial indirect rule was the American Indian reservation. First tested in the mid-nineteenth century in California, then put into practice more formally and completely by presidents Abraham Lincoln and Ulysses S. Grant, the reservation segregated Indians from whites, stripped Indians of land, and minimized the political threat they posed by subjecting them to domination under colonially supervised customary law.
