A History of Broken Treaties

Almost as soon as the white man set foot in America, Native American tribes began ceding tracts of their land through treaties, in a process that quickened when the colonies became a nation.  The first of 370 treaties between the United States and Indian tribes was signed in 1778 - this one with the Delaware's, whose land had once stretched from Ohio to the Atlantic.  In return for the Delaware's' agreement to side with the U.S. against the British, the treaty provided for the organization of an Indian state with the Delaware tribe as its head.

But over the next century the presumably binding contract was rendered meaningless by a succession of 18 new treaties that pushed the Delaware's into and out of Indiana, into and out of Missouri, into and out of Kansas, and finally into Oklahoma, where the few remaining tribesmen ended up with 160 acres apiece.

Further treaties also turned out to be worthless.  The last one in the long series was signed on August 12, 1868, with the Nez Perces.  Having given up seven eighths of their land by earlier treaties, including their beloved Wallowa Valley in Oregon, the Nez Perces agreed to yield part of their reservation to the U.S. Army in return for the right to reclaim parts of the Valley.  When pioneers began to swarm into the region, the Indians begged the Great White Father to intercede, and President Ulysses S. Grant obliged with an executive order barring settlers.  Then gold was found nearby.  The President's order was promptly rescinded, and the Wallowa Valley was again taken away.

In 1871, with Indian power waning, Congress declared that the U.S. would no longer view Indian tribes as separate nations and would sign no more treaties.  Such a declaration was hardly necessary.  The Native Americans, who once had held all the land in America, retained only about 200,000 square miles.  And the whites, who started out with no land at all, now held about three million square miles.