Concluded during the nearly 100-year period from Revolutionary War to Civil War consequences, some 368 treaties would define the relationship between the United States and Native Americans for centuries to come.
The treaties were based on the fundamental idea that each tribe was an independent nation, with its own right to self-determination and autonomy. But as white settlers began to settle on Native American lands, that idea came into conflict with the relentless pace of westward expansion, resulting in many broken promises from the government. American.
Treaty with the Delawares / Treaty of Fort Pitt – 1778
In September 1778, representatives of the newly formed Continental Congress signed a treaty with Lenape (Delaware) at Fort Pitt, Pennsylvania. In the first formal peace treaty between the New United States and a Native American nation, the two sides agreed to maintain friendship and support each other against the British.
But mutual suspicion continued, especially after Pennsylvania militiamen killed nearly 100 Lenape (most of them women and children) in the village of Gnadenhutten in March 1782, mistakenly believing they were responsible. attacks against white settlers. After the American victory, more and more white settlers settled in Lenape’s territory, until the Treaty of Greeneville in 1795 forced them and other Native Americans in the country of Ohio to cede. most of their land.
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Treaty of Hopewell – 1785-1786
In the years following the War of Independence, Andrew Pickens and other commissioners of the new US government made three very similar treaties with the Cherokee, Choctaw and Cherokee nations at Hopewell, the Pickens plantation in northwestern South Carolina.
Collectively known as the Treaty of Hopewell, these agreements extended the friendship and “protection” of the United States to the Native American tribes of the south; all three end with the same sentence: “The hatchet will be forever buried and peace given by the United States of America.”
Despite this sentiment, white settlers were already moving over lands designated for the Cherokees, leading to more conflicts and the Treaty of Holston (1791), in which the Cherokees lost even more land.
READ MORE: Native American History: Timeline
Treaty of Canandaigua / Treaty of Pickering / Treaty of Calico – 1794
Red Jacket, chief of the Senec tribe (Iroquois) and signatory of the Treaty of Canandaigua.
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Seeking to improve relations between his government and the Haudenosaunee Confederacy, a powerful group of six Iroquois-speaking tribes (the Mohawk, Cayuga, Onondaga, Oneida, Seneca and Tuscarora nations), President George Washington sent his Postmaster General, Timothy Pickering, to negotiate a treaty in Canandaigua, New York.
The treaty restores over a million acres of land to the Senecs that had been ceded by treaty 10 years earlier and recognizes the sovereignty of the Six Nations to govern themselves and make laws. He also pledged an annual payment by the United States to the Haudenosaunee of $ 4,500 in goods, including calico cloth.
Over the years, as Six Nations territory was further reduced, the Onondaga, Seneca, Tuscarora, and some Oneida remained in New York City on reservations, while the Mohawks and Cayuga moved to Canada and the Oneida settled. in Wisconsin and Ontario.
Treaty of Greeneville – 1795
As more and more white settlers moved west into the Great Lakes region, a Native American confederacy comprising the Shawnee and Delaware, who had previously been driven west by American expansion, as well as the Miami, Ottawa, Ojibwa, and Potawatomi mounted armed resistance from the late 1780s.
After American troops led by General “Mad” Anthony Wayne defeated them in the Battle of Fallen Timbers, Miami Chief Little Turtle and other Indigenous leaders surrendered much of what would become Ohio, Michigan, Indiana, Illinois and Wisconsin in the Treaty of Greeneville.
But the treaty provided only a short-term resolution, as the continued expansion of the United States quickly reversed its effect. In 1808, the Shawnee warlord, Tecumseh, organized a Native American confederation to mount armed resistance to the continued US seizure of Native American lands.
Treaty of Fort Wayne – 1809
A map of Native American cessions in the Northwest from 1789 to 1816. The territories include the lands ceded under the Treaty of Fort Wayne (labeled C and K on the map), as well as Clark’s Grant, Greenville Treaty, Vincennes Treaty, St Louis Treaty, Fort Treaty of Industry, Treaty of Grouseland and Treaty of Detroit.
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In this treaty, negotiated by William Henry Harrison, then governor of the Indiana Territory, with native tribes such as the Delaware, Potawatomi, Miami and Eel River tribes, the United States acquired 2.5 million acres of land in what is now Michigan, Indiana, Illinois and Ohio, for the equivalent of about two cents an acre. Tecumseh and others argued that the treaty signatories had no authority to sell the land and warned the Americans not to settle there.
In 1811, Harrison led an attack on a Native American camp on the Tippecanoe River, starting a new Native American conflict that would last until the War of 1812. After Tecumseh’s death in combat in 1813, his confederation dissolved, with his dream of Native American independence.
READ MORE: How the Battle of Tippecanoe helped win the White House
Andrew Jackson and Indian Removal Act – 1830
During the decade (1814-24) that Andrew Jackson served as Federal Commissioner, he negotiated nine of the 11 treaties signed with the Native American tribes of the Southeast, including the Choctaws, Chickasaws, Creeks, Seminoles and Cherokees , in which the tribes donated a total of some 50 million acres of land in Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Tennessee, Mississippi, Kentucky and North Carolina.
Elected president in 1828, Jackson led the Indian Removal Act (1830) through Congress, whereby the US government granted land west of the Mississippi River to native tribes who agreed to relinquish their homeland. .
While the removal is supposed to be voluntary, in practice Jackson used threats of withholding payments and legal and military action to conclude nearly 70 removal treaties during his presidency, opening some 25 million acres. of land in the south to the white colony, and slavery.
READ MORE: Why Andrew Jackson’s legacy is so controversial
Treaty of New Echota – 1835
Many Cherokees have resisted removal from their ancestral lands in the Southeast, bringing their struggle to the Supreme Court of the United States. But despite the Court’s decision in Worcester v. Georgia (1832) that the Cherokee and other tribes were “sovereign nations”, the rapture continued. In 1835, the US government met with a group of Cherokee representatives in New Echota, Georgia, to sign a treaty that exchanged the 7 million acres of Cherokee land for $ 5 million and land in Indian territory.
The majority of the Cherokee opposed the treaty, but Congress ratified it anyway, and in 1838 the federal government sent 7,000 American troops to force the withdrawal of the Cherokees. It is estimated that 10-25% of the Cherokee will die during the 1,200-mile trek to Oklahoma, later known as the “Trail of Tears”.
READ MORE: How Native Americans struggled to survive on the trail of tears
Treaty of Fort Laramie – 1868
The signing of a treaty between William T. Sherman and the Sioux in a tent at Fort Laramie, Wyoming, 1868.
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In this treaty, signed at Fort Laramie and other military posts in what is now Wyoming, the U.S. government recognized the Black Hills of Dakota as the Great Sioux Reservation, the exclusive territory of the Sioux (Dakota, Lakota and Nakota) and Arapaho. But after the discovery of gold in the Black Hills, miners and settlers began to settle on the land en masse.
Indigenous resistance to the treaty violation culminated in the Battle of Little Bighorn in 1876, after which government troops flooded the area. By then, Congress had ended the nearly 100-year-old practice of concluding treaties with individual Native American tribes, declaring in 1871 that “henceforth no Indian nation or tribe … shall be recognized. or recognized as a nation, an independent tribe. or the power with which the United States can enter into a treaty. ”
In 1980, the Supreme Court ruled that the Black Hills had been illegally confiscated and awarded the Sioux more than $ 100 million in reparations. Sioux rulers rejected the payment, claiming the land had never been for sale. Controversy continues on Sacred Land – as well as other broken treaties.
