Some townships or other incorporated areas like [[Village (United States)|villages]], [[Borough (United States)|boroughs]], [[Plantation (Maine)|plantations]], and [[Hamlet (place)#United States|hamlets]] have governments and political power; others are simply geographic designations. Townships in many states are generally the product of the [[Public Land Survey System]].
==Political divisions administered by the federal government==
===American Indian reservations===
{{main|Indian reservation}}
American [[Indian reservation]]s are areas of [[land (economics)|land]] managed by an [[Native Americans of the United States|American Indian]] [[tribe]] under the [[United States Department of the Interior]]'s [[Bureau of Indian Affairs]]. There are about 310 [[List of Indian reservations in the United States|Indian reservations in the United States]]. Tribes possess limited [[tribal sovereignty]] over the land in their reservation. As a result, laws on tribal lands may vary from the surrounding area.<ref>Wade Davies and Richmond L. Clow, American Indian Sovereignty and Law: An Annotated Bibliography (Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press, 2009).</ref> The tribal council, not the county or state government, generally has jurisdiction over reservations. Different reservations have different systems of government, which may or may not replicate the forms of government found outside the reservation. Most Indian reservations were established by the federal government; a limited number, mainly in the East, owe their origin to state recognition.<ref>Veronica E. Velarde Tiller, ed., Tiller's Guide to Indian Country: Economic Profiles of American Indian Reservations (Albuquerque: BowArrow Pub., 1996/2005)</ref>
Residents of a reservation may vote as residents of a state and are required to pay federal taxes. The special status of reservations has created both opportunities (such as gambling in states that normally disallow it) and challenges (such as the unwillingness of some companies to do business in an area where they are not certain what laws will apply to them).
