In its 1903 decision in the case of Lone Wolf v. Hitchcock, the United States Supreme Court rejected the efforts of three Native American tribes to prevent the opening of tribal lands to non-Indian settlement without tribal consent.  In his study of the Lone Wolf case, Blue Clark properly emphasizes the Court's assertion of a virtually unlimited unilateral power of Congress (the House of Representatives and the Senate) over Native American affairs.  But he fails to note the decision's more far-reaching impact:  shortly after Lone Wolf, the federal government totally abandoned negotiation and execution of formal written agreements with Indian tribes as a prerequisite for the implementation of federal Indian policy.  Many commentators believe that this change had already occurred in 1871 when--following a dispute between the House and the Senate over which chamber should enjoy primacy in Indian affairs--Congress abolished the making of treaties with Native American tribes.  But in reality the federal government continued to negotiate formal tribal agreements past the turn of the century, treating these documents not as treaties with sovereign nations requiring ratification by the Senate but simply as legislation to be passed by both houses of Congress.  The Lone Wolf decision ended this era of formal negotiation and finally did away with what had increasingly become the empty formality of obtaining tribal consent.

Planter-legislators of the post-Civil War southern United States enacted crop lien laws stipulating that those who advanced cash or supplies necessary to plant a crop would receive, as security, a claim, or lien, on the crop produced.  In doing so, planters, most of whom were former slaveholders, sought access to credit from merchants and control over nominally free laborers--former slaves freed by the victory of the northern Union over the southern Confederacy in the United States Civil War.  They hoped to reassure merchants that despite the emancipation of the slaves, planters would produce crops and pay debts.  Planters planned to use their supply credit to control their workers, former slaves who were without money to rent land or buy supplies. Planters imagined continuation of the pre-Civil War economic hierarchy:  merchants supplying landlords, landlords supplying laborers, and laborers producing crops from which their scant wages and planters' profits would come, allowing planters to repay advances.  Lien laws frequently had unintended consequences, however, thwarting the planter fantasy of mastery without slavery.  The newly freed workers, seeking to become self-employed tenant farmers rather than wage laborers, made direct arrangements with merchants for supplies.  Lien laws, the centerpiece of a system designed to create a dependent labor force, became the means for workers, with alternative means of supply advances, to escape that dependence.

Solar ponds are bodies of water in which circulation is incomplete and there is a very high salt concentration that increases with depth.  This vertical change in salinity serves to trap heat because concentrated brine in the lowest water level acts as a collector and storage area for solar heat, while the less saline, lighter water at the upper levels provides insulation.  Heat is thus retained in the depths.

 

An artificial pond of this type has been constructed on the western shore of the Dead Sea in Israel in order to test its suitability as a source of low-grade heat for conversion into electricity.  An immediate threat to the success of the venture was the growth of algae.  Water in solar ponds must be kept maximally transparent to allow penetration of light to the deep storage area.  Therefore, any particles of matter in the water, such as algae cells, that scatter or absorb light will interfere with the collection of heat.

 

One proposed method of controlling the algae was the application of an algicide.  However, the Dead Sea is a closed body of water without any outlet and as such is very easily contaminated.  Extensive use of chemicals in numerous future full-scale solar ponds would lead to such contamination of the Dead Sea, which now enjoys a lucrative tourist trade.

A recent experiment has supplied a more promising method for controlling the algae.  To repress the algae cells' capacity for accommodating themselves to environmental changes, the water in the solar pond was first made more saline through evaporation and then diluted by a rapid inflow of fresh water.  This shock reduced the cells' ability to regulate the movement of water through their membranes.  They rapidly absorbed water, resulting in distortions of shape, increase in volume, and impairment to motility.  Their buoyancy adversely affected, the cells sank to the bottom of the pond, where they encountered the hot waters of the storage layer and were destroyed.  This method allows for effective control of nuisance algae while leaving solar ponds as one of the cleanest technologies providing energy for human use.