We study the effects of colonial market access on the loss of lands for Indigenous nations, using the rapid expansion of the US railroad network in the nineteenth century as a quasi-natural experiment. We find that increased market access to Indigenous homelands led to a hastening of land dispossession. We find that both reductions in transport costs that improved connectivity to large population centers and the westward advancement of mass settlement were important channels. Taken together, our paper provides evidence that, unlike for settlers' outcomes, railroad-induced market access improvements may not have been beneficial for Indigenous peoples.
Chan et al. (2026) studied this question.