pointé (les transactions)

10:23 Aug 20, 2015 

The context, plus @patrickfor's explanation of 'se défendre', make it clear that the Europeans are denying stealing the land, and therefore emphasising the list of 'legal' transactions instead. I've gone with:
'The Europeans denied stealing the land, and emphasized the transactions they carried out with the Native Americans.' Thanks a lot for all the helpful suggestions.

08:58 Aug 18, 2015 

Your suggestion of "kept a tally" seems perfect. A tally is less formal and detailed than a register and may well refer to various informal notes, so it's more (conveniently for the Europeans) open to manipulation.

08:23 Aug 18, 2015 

Not wishing to make a habit of this, ;-) I agree with Patrick’ readings.

Two meanings are possible, to be confirmed by further context. Here "pointer" could mean :
- to point to : to indicate, to draw attention to, to underline, to insist upon
- to keep a record of : to note down

In the first instance, the Europeans prohibited themselves from stealing Indian land, they also “pointed to” transactions which were drawn up. In the second instance, "to keep a record of", that would suppose that the intention of the writer is to indicate that not only did the Europeans forbid themselves from stealing land, what's more, they actually kept a record of transactions made.

As context of course has to be borne in mind, further surrounding context in your text should help see which if these readings makes the most sense. Both, however, support the argument that the Europeans did not steal land from Indians and that there were transactions as evidence in support of that. Other readings are possible, but would require slightly convoluted readings and of course need to be supported by context.

21:34 Aug 17, 2015 

souligné/mis en avant/rappelés les espèces de transaction ou plutôt "trocs" bidons

16:41 Aug 17, 2015 

@patrickfor - yes, that's exactly it

16:36 Aug 17, 2015 

@Delaina although it is NOT written in this extract, I am under the impression they are trying to explain they didn't stole the land but made transactions with the NA to obtain the land...
The classic story... a few pieces of glass jewellery for an area the size of a NYC :-)

16:22 Aug 17, 2015 

@patrickfor: Merci! Celà a beaucoup plus de logique maintenant.

16:16 Aug 17, 2015 

@asker "se defendre de" n'est pas "se défendre" c'est "s'interdire de" et ici c'est plutot "nier" (to deny). ils nient avoir volé les terres.
- they denied having stolen NA's land and they insisted on the transactions made with NA.
.. from the context I understand they want to show that they made fair deals with the NA people.

15:59 Aug 17, 2015 

I was having trouble with this type of meaning before asking as it wasn't clear at all why the settlers would be drawing attention to these transactions. But I now think it could be "kept a tally": "The Europeans defended their land theft and kept a tally of the transactions they carried out with the Native American people. "

15:53 Aug 17, 2015 

en Francais "pointer" ce peut-être
-> contrôler une à une (comme dans pointer les opérations comptables)
mais aussi simplement
-> attirer l'attention sur
je pencherais plutot pour la 2eme hypothèse sauf si une liste détaillée suivait.

15:46 Aug 17, 2015 

have gone through the list of transactions item by item to prove their point

15:41 Aug 17, 2015 

@polyglot45: I don't really understand 'flag up' in this context; it could be "chalk up" in the sense of accumulate - is that what you think?

15:36 Aug 17, 2015 

flag up, chalk up