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Paper Abstract: Why the U.S. government (USG) entered into treaties with various tribes. Role of treaties in implementing American Indian policy. Nature and purpose. Why USG breached most of these treaties. Overview. Treaties and Policy of Separation. Supreme Court rulings. 19th Century policy of concentration. Contemporary claims by Indian tribes regarding violation of their sovereign rights. Paper Introduction: AMERICAN INDIAN TREATIES This research paper discusses the reasons why the United States Government (USG) entered into treaties with various Native American Indian tribes and ultimately breached most, if not all, of those treaties. The USG-Indian treaties played a key role in implementing American Indian policy from the time when the first such treaty was negotiated (with the Delaware in 1778) until Congress abolished the President's power to make such treaties in 1871. As the relative power of the new Republic increased and that of the Indian tribes waned, the emphasis of Indian policy shifted; however, throughout this period treaties served as the principal means of extinguishing Indian title to their traditional Text of the Paper: The entire text of the paper is shown below. However, the text is somewhat scrambled. We want to give you as much information as we possibly can about our papers and essays, but we cannot give them away for free. In the text below you will find that while disordered, many of the phrases are essentially intact. From this text you will be able to get a solid sense of the writing style, the concepts addressed, and the sources used in the research paper. After 1871, the USGused other means than treaties --i.e. Indiscussing this period, Prucha, however, maintained that the federalgovernment slowed somewhat the pace of white aggression at the expense ofthe Indians. Nature and Purposes of Indian Treaties According to Costo & Henry, Indian treaties took a variety of formsand served many different purposes: "treaties were made with the Indiannations in a number of ways, and for various purposes. San Carlos Apache Tribe (1983), that traditional Indian waterrights pre-empted state law except where Congress expressly legislatedotherwise. The BritishGovernment entered into at least 175 treaties with the North Americantribes (Utter, 2 1, p. Germain, J. Indian Treaty-making Policy in theUnited States and Canada, 1867-1877. 226). 15).Jackson took a more centrist position, arguing that removal of the southernIndians to lands west of the Mississippi was necessary to give them timeand breathing space in order to cope with the demands of modern life.According to Weeks, "Andrew Jackson saw himself as true friend andprotector of the Indians, acting with paternalistic wisdom in their bestinterest" (p. A similar pattern took place in the South where state governmentssupported the efforts of frontiersmen to push back the Indian frontier andto take Indian land by hook or crook. United States (19 8), the court held that Indiantribes have 'prior and paramount rights' to their traditional waters, andin Arizona v. By 189 , the USG was spending$1,364,368 annually on Indian education (Weeks, p. Congressconfiscated much Indian land in the northeast and parts of the South asbooty of war. 37). 334). Article I, Sec. Kelly, L. Debo said that "the ever growing, ever-expanding population thatrecognized the Pacific Ocean as its only limit and identified the Indiansas a natural obstacle . 149). In anotherlandmark case, Winters v. Ambivalent Supreme Court Rulings on Indian Treaty Rights The Indian tribes have consistently maintained that their treatieswith the USG guaranteed them, as sovereign nations, the protection of theUSG in remedying illegal incursions into their homelands and the right tomanage their own affairs on those lands. 148). New York:Chelsea House. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press. . The northern tribes wereforced to enter into treaties which ceded for nominal sums of money hugeblocks of their land in the Northwest Territory to the government which inturn sold it to the settlers. The Plains Indians foundthemselves with their backs to the wall due to the success of GeneralPhilip Sherman's winter campaigns of the late 186 s which struck at theirbase camps, women and children and logistics support system. Since the196 s and 197 s, the pendulum has swung toward a greater recognition byCongress, BIA and the federal courts of the need for greater federalassistance to the reservation Indians and greater recognition of Indianautonomy. The tiny War Department Indian affairs staffand the relatively small military force on the frontier proved incapable ofrestraining the land hunger and migratory fever of the frontiersmen. 162). Large portions of reservation tribal plan were distributed insmall parcels to individual Indians and portions of the remainder were soldto whites at nominal prices at the direction of BIA. It has taken nearly two centuries forthat community to begin to realize that most Indians want to retain not todiscard their proud traditions. The Sioux, Cheyenne and Arapaho tribes resisted demands byspeculators for access to railroad rights of way through their lands. 99). In Worcester, Marshall also,however, said the Indians retained vis-a-vis the states whatever powerswhich were inherent in sovereignty, such as the right of self-determination, unless they were expressly taken away from them under theirtreaties with the USG. The Indians had heldtheir own in defending their lands in the Great Plains due largely to theirgreater familiarity with the terrain.The Union victory released much larger numbers of troops to suppress Indianrebellions. By 1872 only 239, Indians in the Westwere attempting to stem the tide of tens of millions of white emigrants(Weeks, p. 1783-1793) and a number of effective warrior chiefs. However, the interlude or hiatus provided by that policyproved to be relatively brief because of a series of developments duringthe pre-Civil War period. According toWeeks (199 ), Adams "categorically rejected forced removal because it meantrejecting earlier treaties with the tribes; which Adams considered to be anunconscionable violation of the native's solemn policy" (p. Populous and well-organized tribessuch as the Creeks produced formidable leaders such as AlexanderMcGillivray (r. Taylor, T. The military power of the last remaining major Indian tribes in thecolonial northeast, the members of the Iroquois League, who alliedthemselves with the British in the 177 s, was destroyed after they suffereda series of military defeats at the hands of the Continental army andcolonial militias. They easily persuaded themselves that white, western,Christian civilization was superior to that of mere savages. St. Fifty thousand Indians were so removed in the183 s. St. American Indians Answers to Today'sQuestions. 11). In 1848, gold was discovered in northernCalifornia and later in Nevada and Colorado, producing a huge gold rushthrough Indian lands. Georgia (1831), he likened thestatus of Amerindians to that of 'domestic dependent tribes,' or wardssubject to the guardianship of the USG. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press. (1977). The credibility of the tribes in the halls of Congress was damaged bythe support most of them gave the British during the War of 1812. Weeks, P. Deloria, Jr. Conclusion On balance, the Indian treaties have served to facilitatedraconian anti-Indian federal policies and to deprive Indians of theirpatrimony. (1985). However,these eastern-based Presidents had to be careful not to antagonizeunnecessarily frontier populations which were gaining in political power inthe 182 s. (2 1. 191). Debo, A. . President Thomas Jefferson rationalized the relatively feebleresponse of his administrations to white settler violations of the treatieswith the belief that as the Indians were pushed back by the scarcity offish and game caused by the settler's intrusions, they would gradually beimpelled to acquire the habits and know how necessary for them to becomeprosperous and self-sufficient farmers. directed the course of Indian treaty making inthe antebellum years" (p. Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee. (Ed.). 67). President George Washington and the Congress sought toregularize relations with the remaining Indian tribes east of theMississippi through a series of treaties and laws regulating trade with theIndians. Contemporary Significance of Indian Treaties While most Indian tribes welcomed the moves made during the New Dealera and subsequently to restore some semblance of tribal autonomy, thecontinuing paternalistic approach and policies of BIA were resented bythem. Costo, R. Pruchasaid "the force of the intruders was too great to be held back" and that"there was an inherent antagonism between the frontiersmen and anygovernmental force that tried to inhibit their activities" (p. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Treaties with tribes inthe north and south implemented this intent. . The Vanishing American. In Johnson & Graham's Lessee v.McIntosh (1823) Marshall confirmed that as sovereign nations, the Indiantribes were entitled to deal with the USG on all matters relating to thetransfer of title to their land. They promised totake our land, and they took it" (Weeks, p. The allotment policy was ended during the New Deal by BIACommissioner John Collier through the passage of the 1934 IndianReorganization Act. However, in the Johnson case, Marshall also said that underthe doctrine of discovery which dated back to the Spanish conquests, theIndian tribes did not have unrestricted title to land but rather anaboriginal title or a right of occupancy which was subject to the plenarypower of the USG. Introduction When Europeans first arrived on North American shores, theyencountered a vast undeveloped continent populated by hundreds of Indiantribes which Costo & Henry (1977) estimated comprised about twelve millionpeople (p. P. Indian Treaties and the Policy of Removal of the 183 s Presidents James Monroe and John Quincy Adams continued in the 182 sto oppose the taking of Indian lands without their consent but didrelatively little to remedy Indian treaty breaches by whites. 9). Federal Indian Policy. Justice WilliamRehnquist, however, for the court reminded the tribes in United States v.Wheeler (1978) that tribal rights of self-determination remainedsubordinate to the territorial sovereignty of the United States. Georgia (1832), Marshallheld that with respect to Indian matters federal law under the Constitutionpre-empted state law and that ratified Indian treaties were the supreme lawof the land. The pattern which ensued was acceptance by the tribes of landcessions followed by renewed warfare and treaty revisions which pressedthem into smaller areas. 5). 8 of the new Constitution reserved theregulation of Indian affairs to the federal government. Since the Indians' priorpossession of the fertile, beckoning wilderness was indisputable, theEuropeans needed moral justification for their seizure of Indian lands"which formed an obstacle to the westward advance of the white settlers"(Prucha, 1962, p. Earlier treaties provided nominal sums for Indian education andwelfare, but the Andrew Johnson and Grant administrations stressed theeducation of Indian children at USG expense. The assimilation policy and in particular the land allotment policywere unpopular with most Indians. By 186 that population was reduced to about 3 , dueto war, disease and famine (Brown, 2 1, p. Lincoln: University ofNebraska Press. The last forced removal in 1838 becameknown as the Trail of Tears. Weeks saidthat "Eastern [primarily Quaker and other Christian] humanitarians . 1). Germain (2 1) pointed out that the treaty making process in Canada wasnot accompanied by anything remotely similar to the level of violence thatcharacterized American-Indian relations in the middle part of the 19thcentury. General William Sherman opined that even if the entireUnion Army had attempted to block these waves of emigrants it would havefailed.In fact, the USG supported the opening of the West which was then regardedas America's Manifest Destiny. Militant Indian organizations such as the American Indian Movementcontinue to use the Indian treaties as the basis for expanding the scope oftribal self-government and control over the tribes' economic and politicaldestiny and their natural habitat. (1983). 35). American Indian Policy in theTwentieth Century. (2 1). (1985). The 19th century New England orator Edward Everett expressedthe common Anglo belief in the superiority of the white race when he said"the Europeans came; and by causes as simple and natural, as they areinnocent -- the barbarous population . 331). Deloria, V. By and large thepolicy of assimilation assumed wrongly that most Indians preferred todiscard their traditions and embrace the values of Anglo society. & Henry, J. Over 1 treaties were executed between theUSG and western Indian tribes during the period 1848-1867. 63-82). After he was forced to surrender, Siouxwarrior chief Red Cloud said that "they [the whites] made us many promises,more than I can remember, but they never kept but one. 241). . According to Dippie(1982), "Jefferson had badly underestimated the tenacity with which thetribes would cling to their own ways of life" (p. (2 1). Even more detested were efforts by Congress to terminate federalassistance to the tribes and to terminate existing treaties. Jackson himself as Presidentflouted the rulings of the Court on Indian matters with which he disagreed. Ragsdale said that in Marshall's view the Indians "werelike tenants in an apartment building owned and managed by the UnitedStates" (p. The USG-Indian treaties played a key role in implementing AmericanIndian policy from the time when the first such treaty was negotiated (withthe Delaware in 1778) until Congress abolished the President's power tomake such treaties in 1871. The Cherokees with only limited success sought to invoke theprotection of the Supreme Court against the avarice of the settlers and thestate legislatures which supported them. Texas achieved its independence from Mexico which ledto bitter clashes between white settlers and cattlemen and Indian tribes inthe Southwest. 147). The treaties were agreements signed between equalnations offering mutual obligations" (Ragsdale, 1985, p. The Seminolesretreated into Florida where they were hunted down and eventuallydecimated. The reason: "Canada simply did not experience in any comparableform the waves of internal emigrants that engulfed the United States inevery decade of its western expansion" (p. Some Indians took up the whitemen's ways but most had little interest in doing so. 7). (1989). A History of the Indians of the UnitedStates. The education of Indian children took place mostly in off reservationvocational boarding schools where English but not their native languagesand Christianity not their native religions were taught. American Indian Policy. The purpose of thislaw was to teach the Indian to value private property and to facilitate hisbecoming self-sufficient small farmers. TheIndians of the Great Plains depended for their subsistence on the greatherds of buffalo which they hunted and which fell victim to theindiscriminate and eventually massive slaughter of buffalo by white hunterswith deadly repeating rifles. Prucha, F. Between 1778 and 1869 the USG entered into 394 treaties with theIndians (Costo & Henry, p. In Worcester v. Its principal long term effect wasto reduce Indian land holdings from 138, , acres in 1887 to 47, , in 1934 (Debo, p. Weeks said that hardline removalists arguedthat the Indians "incapable of being civilized, were doomed to extinctionand therefore any effort to civilize them would prove futile" (p. Jackson's victory in the presidential election of 1828 provideda majority in favor of removal of the Indians from their remaining landseast of the Mississippi River. (1986). Congress passed the Removal Act of 183 and implementing statutes in1834 under which members of the five Civilized Tribes (Cherokees, Choctaws,Chickasaws, Creeks and Seminoles) were given a draconian choice, either toagree to sell their lands or to be physically removed to the formerLouisiana Territory by the Army. San Francisco: Indian Historian Press. 19). Indian Treaties Two Centuriesof Dishonor. The traditional lands of the Indians inCalifornia, Arizona and New Mexico were threatened by the American victory(1846-1848) in the Mexican War. Debo explained: "inhis relations with the white race the Indian had little capacity forcompromise, for pliant yielding to the inevitable in order to salvage whathe could" (p. For many whites, eventhose disposed to regret treaty violations, a policy of concentration ofthe Indians in smaller and smaller reservation zones was seen as a morehumane alternative than the ultimate extermination of the western Indianswhich many whites believed at that time would be their fate. 7). Utter, J. These and other rulings by the Court supported thefederal government's efforts to restrain white settlers from violating thetreaties but afforded the tribes little protection whenever the USG itselfgradually acquiesced in those violations. Thepostwar uprising led by the Shawnee Chief Tecumseh, who attempted to unifyIndian resistance to the white onslaught, failed. The early 18 s witnessed the unauthorized squatting on and seizureof Indian lands by frontiersmen and land speculators, the granting of titleto Indians by state legislatures, and punitive military expeditions againstIndians who attacked settlers. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press. Federal Indian policy in the FormativeYears. President UlyssesGrant who in many respects was more sympathetic to the plight of theIndians than most of his predecessors supported the 1871 legislationbecause he believed the Indian treaties "perpetuated a farce" (Weeks, p.157). No American of European descent can be proud of this record; however,one must understand that once support of the USG for the westward expansionbecame a reality, the reservation policy emerged as a political necessity.In 1871 the House of Representatives, jealous of the Senate's prerogativesto advise and consent to the Indian treaties, passed through Congress a lawwhich banned the negotiation of any further treaties. has been replaced by one muchbetter, much happier" (Dippie, 1982, p. . The 1948 Hoover Commission task force reported that "thedestruction of Indian tribal government, the liquidation of tribalorganization and tribal property, and the hostility to all Indian ways andculture that characterized so much of government policy now appears to havebeen a mistake" (Debo, p. As the relative power of the new Republicincreased and that of the Indian tribes waned, the emphasis of Indianpolicy shifted; however, throughout this period treaties served as theprincipal means of extinguishing Indian title to their traditionalhomelands and hunting grounds and thereby facilitated the relentlesswestward expansion of white settlers. However, various factors ledto the persistent and frequent breach of these treaties. Middletown,CT: Weslayan University Press. laws, agreements with specifictribes, executive orders and actions to implement Indian policy;nevertheless, in the second half of the 2 th centuries, past treatiesassumed new importance as a major basis for claims by various Indian tribesthat their sovereign rights had been violated and that they were entitledto a much greater measure of self-determination. 65). Germain said that an important feature of the Indian treaties ofthe 186 s, such as the treaties of 1867-1868 with the Sioux and Cheyenneand the Numbered Treaties with the Five Civilized Tribes, were clauseswhich promoted assimilation of the Indians into white society --i.e "thesocial transformation of Indians into replicas of their white neighbors"(p. .bitterly denounced the army's actions" (p. 7). Their primary purpose was to guarantee peaceon the frontier and to secure Indian allies against the French and Spanish.In 1763, England issued the Royal Proclamation of Paris, which declaredthat all Indian lands west of the Appalachian Mountains were in 'IndianCountry' off limits to colonial settlers. Such progress as the Indians have made in redressing theirconsiderable grievances against the USG have largely been based on thelegal rights and privileges reserved to them under the very same treaties.The treaties reflected the beliefs and value systems, however biased theywere, of the dominant Anglo society. They were negotiatedand consummated with individual tribes, with bands, with groups of tribes,and with regions in which a number of different tribes resided" (p. After their defeat by Andrew Jackson, namedSharp Knife by the Indians, at the Battle of Horseshoe Bend in Alabama in1814, the Creeks lost two-thirds of their homelands. In Cherokee Nation v. Most of themwere aimed at implementing a policy of concentration, moving the Indiansinto government-managed reservations, and securing peace with tribes whichresorted to warfare to preserve their traditional homelands in the GreatPlains and in the territories guaranteed to the Five Civilized Tribes underthe removal policy.St. The Oregon Trail which ran through the lands of the Plains Indiansopened up the Pacific Northwest. W. Ragsdale, F. AMERICAN INDIAN TREATIES This research paper discusses the reasons why the United StatesGovernment (USG) entered into treaties with various Native American Indiantribes and ultimately breached most, if not all, of those treaties. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press. Among other decisions, Oliphant v.Suquamish Tribe (1978) held that the tribes had the right guaranteed by18th and 19th century treaties to maintain safety and order on reservationsin a manner consistent with their cultural traditions. In 1862 Congress passed the Homestead Act which accelerated thewestward movement of settlers. The Swissphilosopher Emmerich de Vattel argued that the cession by the Indians (thenin the hunter gatherer stage of development) of most of their lands towhites who could put natural resources to more productive use was a fairexchange for receiving the blessings of European civilization (Taylor,1983, p. InV. They traded over 1 million acres for 32 million acres in Oklahomaand Arkansas (Weeks, p. From the point of view of the Indians, the whiteman spoke with a forked tongue. Some hardliners were in favor of a pure policy offorce, such as was manifested in the Army's brutal massacre of the Cheyennesettlement at Sand Creek, Colorado in 1864. Under the Northwest Ordinance of July 1787, Congress announced itsintention to treat the Indians with "the utmost good faith" and not to taketheir lands or property from them without their consent, except in just andlawful wars authorized by Congress (Prucha, p. Mt. Unlike, however, the Spanish who took what they wanted inTerra Nova with little regard for the consent of the Indians, the Englishin North America "treated the Indian tribes as nations, as manifested bythe treaty process. With a gun to their heads and a bribe in theform of annual annuity payments promised by the USG, most southern Tribesentered into treaties of removal under duress. References Brown, D. Dippie, B. Farewell, My Nation the American Indianand the United States, 182 -189 . C. American Indian Policy in the TwentiethCentury (pp. Although the treaties were originallyintended to and did in fact regularize and slow to some degree that flow, acombination of factors including white racism, powerful economic,political, military and technological pressures and Indian intransigenceand inability to cope produced a dishonorable trail of broken treatieswhich forever threw into question their legitimacy. The Indian tribal leadership must also bear some share of theresponsibility for the consequences of the repeatedly broken treaties dueto their gullibility and the rigidity of their mindset. Anotheraspect of this policy which was largely accomplished by statute rather thantreaty and through the decisions of the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) wasthe federal allotment policy set up under the Dawes General Allotment Actof 1887. (Ed.). The Supreme Court in particular has moved in the direction ofaccepting Indian rights of self-determination, especially where Congresshas enacted enabling legislation such as the Indian Claims Act of 1946, theIndian Civil Rights Act of 1968 and the Indian Self-Determination andEducation Assistance Act of 1975. Indian Treaties and the Policy of Concentration (184 -1871) At the time the removal policy was enacted, it seemed reasonable toAmerican statesmen to assume that separation of the Indians from whiteswould, because of the vast expanse of sparsely populated land in the West,minimize conflict. The Indian treaties in the West became, therefore, means ofimplementing a policy of concentration of, and military attrition against,the western tribes. Much remains to be done to correct pastinjustices done to them by the USG under the treaties and otherwise. (199 ). Some post-Revolutionary War treaties, such as those with the Delaware and the Creeksrepresented defensive alliances against foreign powers deemed necessary bythe weak fledgling Republic. After the Civil War ended, the pressures on the Indians to open uptheir land to white emigrants became overwhelming. (1982). 2 ). They were, however, givensolemn guarantees by the USG that their newly awarded lands in the Westwould remain inviolate. x). The frontier areas were further opened tosettlement by government subsidized internal improvements such as roads andthe Erie Canal and by technological advances such as the steamboat andlater the telegraph and the railroads. However, as the European powers withdrew fromAmerican lands, France by Bonaparte Napoleon's sale of the LouisianaTerritory in 18 4, the British departure after the War of 1812 and theSpanish sale of Florida to the United States in 1819, strategicconsiderations no longer motivated the USG to enter into treaties with theIndians. In the 182 s and 3 s the SupremeCourt under the aegis of Chief Justice John Marshall made a series oflandmark rulings on Indian treaty rights. The Deception of Geography. He said "the laws of Congress, the proclamations of thePresident, and the orders issued by the War Department did provide a brakeon western-rolling juggernaut" (p. W. 118). New York:Henry Holt. (1962). The Indians whom the Britishdeserted after the War of 1812 were essentially pawns in British imperialpolicy. 1 5). In reviewing the historyof the federal government's non-compliance with its treaty obligations tothe Indians, liberal reformer Helen Hunt Jackson in 188 called it "ashameful record of broken treaties and unfulfilled promises" (Costo &Henry, p. The Meriam Commission (BrookingsInstitution) report of 1926 declared federal Indian education policy afailure. Indian Treaties and the Policy of Separation (1778-1829) Prior to the Revolutionary War, the power to make treaties withIndian tribes was vested exclusively in the English Crown. One wonders, however, whether the result might not havebeen the same no matter what the Indians did. 148). Arlington Heights: HarlanDavidson.----------------------- 19 L., Jr. Debo(1986) said that "in a rapid series of treaties during the opening years ofthe century, the Southern tribes ceded tract after tract as the settlersoverran them, each time assuming (and vainly hoping) that the new boundarywould be permanent" (p. 26). Airy, MD:Lomond Publications. 8 ). If this paper is not what you are looking for, you can search again: Search for: or Click here to request an essay written just for you.