Title: Reading Check 2: Treaties and Removal
Course: The American West: Power, Place, and Memory > Section: Week 4 · September 14–18, 2026: Removal, Sovereignty, and the Mexican North

Q: Why should a treaty be read as more than a final legal text?
- A purely fictional narrative
- A translated and contested negotiation
- A land record without politics
- A text relevant only to lawyers
A: A translated and contested negotiation

Q: Which distinction is most important when analyzing removal policy?
- Policy intent versus lived implementation
- Printed texts versus handwritten copies
- Long documents versus short summaries
- Eastern typefaces versus western typefaces
A: Policy intent versus lived implementation

Q: What does sovereignty refer to in this unit?
- A single cultural inheritance
- Private ownership of land
- Population classification by census
- Political authority and self-government
A: Political authority and self-government

Q: Name one piece of evidence from this unit and explain how its creator, audience, or collection context affects how a historian may use it.

Q: Make a one-sentence claim answering this unit question: How did treaties and removals remake western space without eliminating Indigenous sovereignty? Then identify one limitation, uncertainty, or counterexample that keeps the claim from becoming too broad.