A treaty is simply an agreement between two or more sovereign nations. Following the Constitution, the United States recognized Indian nations as sovereign entities and thus negotiated treaties with them. From the viewpoint of American law, there are three basic steps involved in the treaty process: (1) the treaty is negotiated, (2) it is then ratified by the Senate, and (3) it is proclaimed (signed) by the President. At this time, the treaty is considered to be in force and is a law which is superior to that of local or state laws.
(see Indians 101: A very short overview of treaties for a more detailed explanation of treaties.)
In 1851, treaty negotiators from the United States called the Indian nations of the Northern Plains to meet in council at Fort Laramie in what is now Wyoming. The purpose of the council and of the resulting treaty was to establish peace between the United States and the tribes, including a promise to protect Indians from European-Americans, and to stop the tribes from making war with one another. With regard to the American reason for holding the council, historian Robert Larson, in his biography Gall: Lakota War Chief, writes:
“One of its major motivations was to protect the growing stream of white emigrants heading west on the Oregon Trail.”
Plains Indian nations throughout what is now Montana, the Dakotas, and Wyoming were invited to the council. Invitations were sent via fur traders, missionaries, and others. In the Dakotas, the Jesuit missionary Father Pierre Jean DeSmet persuaded the Mandan, Hidatsa, and Arikara to make the journey to Fort Laramie for the “big smoke.”
The Fort Laramie Treaty Council included representatives from the Sioux (though records fail to note which Sioux tribes participated), Cheyenne, Arapaho, Shoshone, Crow, Assiniboine, Arikara, Gros Ventre, Mandan, and Hidatsa nations. An estimated 8,000 - 12,000 Indians gathered for this council. In his book Where the Lightning Strikes: The Lives of American Indian Sacred Places, Peter Nabokov reports:
“It was the mother of all powwows; the world would not see its like again.”
In his book Savages and Scoundrels: The Untold Story of America’s Road to Empire Through Indian Territory, Paul VanDevelder describes it this way:
“By the standards of European law, signed treaties were the prize to be won by staging a successful council ceremony, but for the tribes, the council, the gathering, the speechmaking, and the feasting were in and for themselves the desired end. For all the Plains tribes, politics was the process of achieving consensus.”
One of the events of the council was the spectacular entry of the Crow into the council grounds. Riding on painted horses, singing their war songs, with chiefs Big Robber and Mountain Tail holding their ceremonial pipes like royal scepters, they rode into the crowd of Indians who had already gathered. Peter Nabokov writes:
“Quite likely the Crow stage-managed their entry for maximum effect, as they did on triumphal returns home after successful war parties.”
After passing the pipe, D.D. Mitchell tells the chiefs:
“We do not want your lands, horses, robes, nor anything you have; but we come to advise with you, and make a treaty with you for your own good.”
Lakota writer Joseph Marshall, in his book The Day the World Ended at Little Bighorn: A Lakota History, notes:
“The peace commissioners at that time presumed to have authority over a region they presumed to own, and over the people who lived within it.”
Making Chiefs
The American negotiators had almost no understanding of or concern for Native American government. American negotiators preferred to deal with dictatorships rather than democracies. Since almost no Indian nations were dictatorships, this meant that the United States preferred to appoint the chiefs with whom they negotiated. In this way, the United States only had to deal with a handful of Indian leaders, leaders who tended to be agreeable to American interests as they had been appointed by American officials. The United States often ignored leaders who were chosen by Indian people and preferred to deal with the “puppet dictators” which it had set up.
In addition, American negotiators preferred to deal with as few Indian nations as possible. They failed to recognize band and tribal autonomy and simply created fictional tribes with whom they could negotiate. They often assumed that if a people spoke the same language, or languages that were closely related, that they could be considered to be a single tribe. The American negotiators, ignorant of Indian cultures, simply grouped autonomous bands together as if they were a single tribe.
At the Fort Laramie Treaty Council, each tribe (as defined by the United States) was asked to provide a single chief of the whole nation. The American commissioner David Mitchell told the chiefs:
“Your Great Father will treat with the whole nation or tribe when united, not with any band, however large or powerful. For this purpose I desire that each nation select one suitable man to be chief of the whole nation … [and] through him your Great Father will transact all Government business. The man you select for chief of the nation shall be a good man, and fit for the place.”
After council with his people, chief Terra Blue of the Brulé (one of the Sioux tribes), told the Americans:
“We have decided differently from you, Father, about this Chief for the nation. We want a Chief for each band.”
Paul VanDevelder reports:
“Rather than organizing themselves around a central council of elders, the Sioux were little more than a tangled web of blood relationships, shared rituals, overlapping territories, and nebulous political alliances that could be formed one day and broken the next.”
Mitchell responds to the Sioux by selecting a single chief—Frightening Bear--to represent the entire Sioux nation. Paul VanDevelder writes:
“Frightening Bear, a brave of the highest reputation, told the council that he was not afraid to die, but that they were putting him in a very difficult position.”
In the opinion of fur trader Alexander Culbertson, who was married to the Blackfoot woman Natawista, the choice of Frightening Bear was a serious blunder. Paul VanDevelder writes:
“For the veteran fur trader and diplomat, this was another lamentable example of how Washington’s ethnocentric view of the world seemed utterly incapable of solving one problem without creating half a dozen more.”
Culbertson felt that the government should have recognized the sovereignty of each of the Sioux bands.
The Arapaho selected Little Owl and Cut Nose to sign the treaty and Little Owl was designated as head chief. The Cheyenne had difficulty in selecting a head chief, but finally selected the keeper of the sacred arrows, He Who Walks with Toes Turned Out. Anthropologist Loretta Fowler, in her book Arapahoe Politics 1851-1978: Symbols in Crises of Authority, reports:
“The Cheyennes note that the He Who Walks with Toes Turned Out was not particularly well known for leadership ability, nor was he skilled in dealings with whites.”
The Americans designated Crazy Bear to the position of Assiniboine tribal chief. In his 1924 book Land of the Nakoda: The Story of the Assiniboine Indians, James Long reports:
“This treaty marked the first cession of lands by the Assiniboine as well as the creation of the original reservation and the first chieftain with authority over the entire tribe.”
Negotiating the treaty with Crazy Bear is First Fly (also known as The First Who Flies). With regard to the Assiniboine involvement in the council, Dennis Smith, in a chapter in The History of the Assiniboine and Sioux Tribes of the Fort Peck Indian Reservation, Montana, 1800-2000, writes:
“Inviting Assiniboines was a significant exception to the commission’s authority, because Assiniboines lived north of the Missouri River and in the White Earth River area, on the east side, but the treaty commission was directed to treat only with tribes south of the Missouri River and east of the Rockies.”
The leaders of the farming village tribes from the Dakotas included Four Bears (Hidatsa), Gray Prairie Eagle (Arikara), Red Roan Cow (Mandan), and Raven Chief (Mandan).
The Americans provided each of the head chiefs with a full major-general’s uniform. In addition, the chiefs were delegated to distribute the goods issued by the federal government. The goods given to the chiefs to distribute to their people at the council included tobacco, serge, vermillion, blankets, knives, beads, sugar, and coffee. This enhanced the power of the chiefs.
Territories
One of the American objectives of the treaty council was to define tribal territories, not from an aboriginal viewpoint, but from a map-oriented European perspective. The American negotiators had little understanding of traditional Indian concepts of land use and the rights associated with the lands.
At the Fort Laramie Treaty Council, each tribal area was defined, including an area for the Blackfoot Nation which is not represented at the Council. Paul VanDevelder writes:
“In Article 5, the Great Fathers formally recognized the homelands of the tribes that were signatory to this treaty, and promised that white settlers would be prohibited from settling in those territories for ‘as long as the rivers shall flow.’”
According to the Treaty, Sioux had ownership of 60 million acres of land.
The Assiniboine agreed to a buffalo hunting area south of the Missouri River, west of the Yellowstone River to the confluence of the Musselshell and Missouri and then southeast to the confluence of the Yellowstone near the mouth of the Powder River.
The Council ignored the participation of the Shoshones and assigned their northeastern hunting range to the Crow. As there were no River Crow at the Council, the Mountain Crow version of their geographic rights and hunting areas was used and was assumed by the Americans to be binding to all of the Crow tribes.
The Americans also failed to distinguish between the Northern Cheyenne and the Southern Cheyenne and grouped both tribes together in the south. The Sioux received the rights to the Black Hills and other lands claimed by the Northern Cheyenne.
With regard to signing the treaty, historian Jeffrey Ostler, in his book The Lakotas and the Black Hills: The Struggle for Sacred Ground, writes:
“Most understood it primarily as an expression of friendship and an agreement to provide compensation for the destruction caused by the overlanders.”
Annuities
The Treaty also provided annuities to the tribes. The government, in consideration for the rights of way through Indian lands and for damages to the Indians, would provide $50,000 worth of merchandise each year. If the Indians violated the treaty agreements, the President could withhold the annuity payments.
While the original treaties called for annuities to be paid to the Indians for 50 years, the Senate changed this to 10 years with the right to continue the annuities for an additional 5 years at the discretion of the President. David Mitchell, who had helped negotiate the treaty with the tribes, would later write:
“This modification of the treaty I think very proper, as the condition of these wandering hordes will be entirely changed during the next fifteen years.”
Historian Jeffrey Ostler writes:
“This act—revising an agreement that was understood to be final—signaled a demoralizing future in which the U.S. government would continually demand that Lakotas consent to disadvantageous revisions in agreements initially presented as permanent.”
In her1881 book A Century of Dishonor: A Sketch of the United States Government’s Dealings with Some of the Indian Tribes, Helen Hunt Jackson opines:
““To comment on the bad faith of this action on the part of Congress would be a waste of words; but its impolicy is so glaring that one’s astonishment cannot keep silent—its impolicy and also its incredible niggardliness.”
Indians 101
Twice each week—on Tuesdays and Thursdays—this series presents stories on many different American Indian topics. More from this series:
Indians 101: A Chippewa Treaty
Indians 201: The 1854-1855 Western Washington Treaties
Indians 101: The First U.S. Treaties with the Navajo
Indians 101: The 1837 Winnebago Treaty
Indians 101: The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo
Indians 101: Breaking Treaties
Indians 101: Treaty Rock and the Coeur d'Alene Indians
Indians 101: Chehalis Treaties and Reservations