The United States: westward expansion and Native dispossession
Settler colonialism on a continental scale
As the United States expanded westward, it dispossessed Native American nations through treaties, removal, and war. The Supreme Court’s Johnson v. M’Intosh (1823) embedded the European “Doctrine of Discovery” into U.S. law, holding that discovery gave the sovereign title and reduced Native peoples to a “right of occupancy.”
What happened
A land-title dispute forced the Supreme Court to decide whether individuals could hold land purchased directly from Native tribes. Chief Justice Marshall’s opinion held that “discovery” gave European sovereigns (and their U.S. successor) title, subject only to an Indian “right of occupancy.”
discovery gave title to the government by whose subjects, or by whose authority, it was made, against all other European governments… (Marshall CJ, 1823)
Under each definition
The U.S. governed Native nations as domestic “dependent” polities rather than classic overseas administrative colonies; the classical label fits imperfectly.
Mass settlement displacing indigenous populations to build a permanent society is the core case of settler colonialism.
This is direct dispossession, not post-independence economic control (though “internal colonialism” is a related frame).
Widely described as colonialism/settler colonialism in contemporary usage.
The case that the label applies
A settler state asserted ultimate title to indigenous land by right of “discovery,” reducing sovereign nations to occupants who could be dispossessed — the legal machinery of settler colonialism, stated by the Supreme Court.
The case against
Because the U.S. was itself a former colony, some resist the “colonial” label for its internal expansion, preferring “expansion” or “conquest.” Scholars of settler colonialism reply that internal colonization of indigenous nations is precisely the point; the label is now standard in the field.
In their words
discovery gave title to the government by whose subjects, or by whose authority, it was made, against all other European governments
The verdicts above are how each definition would most likely classify this situation — illustrative guidance, not court rulings. Colonialism has no treaty crime, so no application is a legal “finding”; every characterization is attributed to the person or body that made it. The lenses diverge most on two questions — whether there is a “metropole” and who counts as “indigenous” — and on the difference between a historical judgment and a moral analogy. See the Definition tab for each definition’s full text. Inclusion is documentation, not a finding.