This is the first descriptive analysis of how American Indian policies are made both at the statewide and at agency levels. Pertinent to all states, the study describes New York’s historic policies and emphasizes that improving Indian lifestyles or attracting Indians to government employment is handicapped by their overall distrust of state intentions, a distrust caused by the continued impasse on American Indian land claims. Employing archival records never before used, as well as a plethora of interviews with state officials and American Indians over a fifteen-year period, Hauptman concludes that critical policy changes are needed to build lasting trust.

This long overdue biography of English-born N.Y. lawyer John Laurance (1760-1810) restores an important missing piece to the founding narrative of the U.S. It describes the middling Cornish emigre’s against-all-odds passage to Federalist America’s governing inner circle. Laurance spent 5 wartime years as Gen. Washington’s “courtroom Baron von Steuben” and was battlefield father of the U.S. Army Judge Advocate Corps. Never defeated for electoral office, Col. Laurance spoke as N.Y.C.’s post-war pro-mercantile voice in the Confederation Congress, state legislature, and both houses of the fledgling federal Congress. This biography casts fresh light on the rise and fall of America’s first political Party, the Federalists. Illus.