Over a 100 year period beginning in 1778, the United States signed hundreds of treaties with Indian groups. Many of these treaties resulted in land cessions from indigenous nations that displaced Native people and increased the land base of the U.S. These treaties are the documents through which the United States was physically formed.
(Not all treaties involved land cessions.
Strategic alliances, conflict resolution and trade agreements
were formalized through treaties, as well.)
In addition to these official treaties, many other agreements affected relationships and expectations between Americans and indigenous nations. The U.S. negotiated several important strategic agreements with Indian groups during the Revolutionary War that were never written down. In the early years of the treaty making era, negotiations were not centralized. Individual states and corporations entered into often-conflicting treaties with local or bordering indigenous nations. The U.S. eventually made it illegal for any entity to negotiate a treaty with Indians except the federal government.
(Many treaties include language in which Indian signers recognize the “controlling power” of the United States government. This language is often taken as a concession of full sovereignty by Indian groups, but it is worth considering whether this language was actually a result of internal U.S. politics, a statement of the federal governments primacy over States or even individual land speculators in conducing “Indian affairs.”)
Kappler also did not include a number of treaties that are held by the State Department. Most of these treaties were negotiated with Indian nations by England, before the United States existed. But it was through treaties that land was transformed into property, and these treaties — dating back to 1722 — are so important to property rights in the eastern U.S. that Congress ratified them long after the fact.
U.S.-Indian relations were also affected by treaties signed by the Confederate States of America during the Civil War, by the Republic of Texas, and by English, French and Spanish governments that established a status quo which the U.S. “inherited” through the vicissitudes of European politics.
(The Louisiana Purchase, for instance, was not a real estate deal, as many people assume. It was a trade agreement, by which the U.S. gained a monopoly on trade with Indians in a vast geographic area. In signing the Louisiana Purchase, the U.S. agreed to abide by all treaties the French had formalized with indigenous nations.)
The Indian treaties are notable today not only as a basis for the property rights of U.S. citizens, but also as the foundation
for Indian land rights and sovereignty.
Virtually every aspect of the Indian treaties is open to debate — beginning with how many there are. In 1908, Charles Kappler compiled a volume of treaty texts for Congress that was intended to serve as the official version of all treaties. The volume includes 389 treaties. But to be official, a treaty had to be ratified by the Senate and proclaimed by the President. Kappler includes a number of treaties that were never proclaimed — although, as in the case of the Dakota treaty of 1805, the U.S. occupied Indian land as if these treaties were official. And the Senate often made unilateral changes in the treaties after they were signed by Indian representatives; some of these changes were so extensive that they required re-negotiation, and Kappler at times includes re-negotiated versions as separate treaties. Other factors also call into question the number of official treaties. In 1805, for instance, two treaties were signed by the Seneca on the same day on the same site; separate documents were needed to clarify which land speculators were taking possession of various multimillion acre land areas, but are they two treaties, or one?
Treaties negotiated without the U.S. Federal government
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Louisiana Purchase
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U.S. - Indian Affairs timeline
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Land
Background on Sovereignty
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Sovereignty
Property
