Indian treaty

“ After mature reflection, I am of opinion that military posts ought to be established and kept up within the Indian territory, in such positions as to maintain peace among the Indians, and protect the emigrant and feebler tribes against the stronger and more warlike nations that surround them; which the United States are bound to do by treaty stipulations. To withdraw those which now exist there, would be to violate our faith, as there is reason to apprehend that it would be the signal of war. ”

“ They recognize, as we do, that the Indian has a possessory right to the soil. They purchase this right, as we do, by treaty; but their treaties are made with the Indian subjects of Her Majesty. They set apart a permanent reservation for them they seldom remove Indians they select agents of high character, who receive their appointments for life they make fewer promises, but they fulfil them; they give the Indians Christian missions, which have the hearty support of Christian people, and all their efforts are toward self-help and civilization. ”

“ Thus it happened that the Indians, who had, according to generally accepted views as to the rights acquired by long-continued occupancy and cultivation, the best right of all Indians to the land of their ancestors, were to receive from the Government not even the color of recognition. In all the great book of Indian treaties, there is not one treaty or agreement with the Mission Indians. ”

“ That the United States should conclude a peace with the Indian allies of Great Britain, and that a species of neutral belt of Indian territory should be established between the dominions of the United States and Great Britain, so that these dominions should be nowhere conterminous, upon which belt or barrier neither power should be permitted to encroach even by purchase, and the boundaries of which should be settled in this treaty. ”

“ The Indian agent, anxious, for manifest reasons, to negotiate a treaty, at once interferes “to protect” (as he expresses it) the Indians from the troops, and arrests the further prosecution of the military expedition just at the moment when results are to be obtained by it, and the whole labor and cost of the campaign are lost. The Indian makes a treaty to avoid immediate danger by the troops, without the slightest purpose of keeping it, and the agent knows very well that the Indian does not intend to observe it. ”

“ The early colonists on this continent saw in the Indian tribes surrounding them a very formidable power, and naturally entered with them into formal treaty relations. That system has come by inheritance down to our days, when the Indians, under a radical change of circumstances, appear at the same time as “independent tribes,” as “national wards,” and as subjects. It is needless to recount the history of Indian treaties. As white settlements rapidly spread over the country treaties were, in a large number of instances, made only to be broken. ”

“ The usual cause of Indian wars is want of good faith in carrying out the obligations of treaties. It is scarcely too much to say that we rarely, if ever, carry out treaty stipulations with Indians. The great majority of the people of the United 398States wish to treat the Indian not only fairly, but kindly, generously, magnanimously. Money enough is appropriated, if it were judiciously and honestly expended. But the sums appropriated seem to become small by degrees and wonderfully less before they reach the Indian. It is not the interest of the Indian Ring to have the Indian question settled. ”

“ These Indians boast with great pride that they as a nation never shed a white man's blood, but the Government has, through its agents, been so dilatory in fulfilling its treaty stipulations, and agents have promised so often that all the stipulations of the treaties would soon be fulfilled, and to so little purpose, that these Indians do not believe that an agent can or will tell the truth. ”

“ There is something, too, which shocks the conscience, in the idea that a treaty can be put forth as embodying the terms of an arrangement with a foreign power or an Indian tribe, a material provision of which is unknown to one of the contracting parties, and is kept in the background, to be used by the other only when the exigencies of a particular case may demand it. ”

“ Just as we choose to construe them at the time, without any reference to the wishes of the Indians, or whether we do them kindness or justice in the operation, or not. We are often prompted to their ratification by persons interested; and we lend ourselves unintentionally to an unjust act of oppression upon the Indians by men who go and get their signatures to a treaty. The Indian's mark is made; the employés of the Government certify or witness it; and the Indians do not understand it, for they do not know what is written. These are some of the circumstances connected with the Indians. ”

“ Two years after the erection of the Board of Indian Commissioners Congress took another long step towards a better condition by ordering that no more treaties with the Indian tribes should be made by President and Senate. For more than two years before 1871 no treaty had been made and ratified, and now the policy was definitely changed. For ninety years the Indians had been treated as independent nations. Three hundred and seventy treaties had been concluded with various tribes, the United States only once repudiating any of them. ”

“ Intimately connected with this subject is the obligation of the Government to fulfill its treaty stipulations and to protect the Indians thus assembled "at their new residences from all interruptions and disturbances from any other tribes or nations of Indians or from any other person or persons whatsoever," and the equally solemn obligation to guard from Indian hostility its own border settlements, stretching along a line of more than 1,000 miles. ”

“ After the Constitution’s ratification, the new Federal Government exercised its enumerated powers with regard to Indian tribes. To start, the Government embarked on an era of treaty-making with Indian tribes. See Cohen §1.03 [1] , at 23. That treaty-focused policy reflected the Washington administration’s view that Indian tribes were best dealt with as mostly “foreign nations,” with an eye towards peace lest frontier conflicts continue to plague the new Nation. ”

“ And so the matter stands at present--if the Indians agree amongst themselves, the treaty will be opened to-morrow, otherwise the Governor will strike camp and return to Fort Garry.
Divisions and local jealousies have taken possession of the Indian mind. The difficulties are the inability of the Indians to select a high or principal chief from amongst themselves, and as to the matter and extent of the demands to be made. ”

“ I refer, of course, to the policy of dealing with the various Indian tribes as separate nationalities, of relegating them by treaty stipulations to the occupancy of immense reservations in the West, and of encouraging them to live a savage life, undisturbed by any earnest and well-directed efforts to bring them under the influences of civilization. ”

“ An examination of a digest of all the treaty covenants made by the Government with Indian tribes during its century of existence, will show very many revisions and annulments of them, from necessity, emergency, or the alleged stress of circumstances. Sometimes these have been made with the full consent and approbation of the tribes concerned in them; sometimes they have been compelled to assent to them against their wills, more or less compensatory substitutes being made to them. ”

“ The inaptitude of the Indian tribes generally, for conducting the business of self-government, and their want of a wise foresight in anticipating the relative power and position of the two great opposing races in America, namely, the white and red, has been the primary cause of all their treaty difficulties. ”

“ When a treaty is made they become servants of the Queen; they are to try and keep order amongst their people. We will try to keep order in the whole country.
"A Chief has his braves; you see here the braves of our Queen, and why are they here? To see that no white man does wrong to the Indian. To see that none give liquor to the Indian. To see that the Indians do no harm to each other. Three years ago some Americans killed some Indians ”

“ And any substantial improvements heretofore made by any individual Indian, and which he may be compelled to abandon in consequence of this treaty, shall be valued under the direction of the President and payment made therefor accordingly. ”

“ In Testimony of our Gratitude for all his Services, and because he was so good as to leave his Country-House, and follow us to Town, and be at the Trouble, in this his advanced Age, to attend the Council; we present him with this Bundle of Skins. [Pg 33]
'BRETHREN,
It is always our Way, at the Conclusion of a Treaty, to desire you will use your Endeavours with the Traders, that they may sell their Goods cheaper, and give us a better Price for our Deer-Skins. Whenever any particular Sort of Indian Goods is scarce, they constantly make us pay the dearer on that Account. ”

“ The United States have fulfilled in good faith all their treaty stipulations with the Indian tribes, and have in every other instance insisted upon a like performance of their obligations. ”

“ It may be sufficient to note that the relations between the Government of India and Native States are governed by treaties and engagements, varying in their conditions in accordance with the size and importance of each State, and the circumstances under which it came into contact with British power. Generally speaking, the position of all Native States is one of subordinate cooperation, the Government undertaking to protect them and to acknowledge their independence on conditions of loyalty to the Crown of England, of good administration, and of due fulfilment of treaty obligations. ”

“ In nearly four hundred treaties, confirmed by the Senate as are treaties with foreign powers, our government recognized Indian tribes as nations with whom the United States might contract without derogating from its sovereignty. ”

“ One thing Indians must understand, that if they do not make a treaty they must obey the laws of the land—that will be just the same whether you make a treaty or not; the laws must be obeyed. The Queen's Government wishes to give the Indians here the same terms as it has given all the Indians all over the country, from the prairies to Lake Superior. Indians in other places, who took treaty years ago, are now better off than they were before. They grow grain and raise cattle like the white people. ”

“ There were present perhaps 20,000 Indians, representing probably 40,000 or 45,000 of various tribes. Probably three-fourths of the grown males of the consolidated tribes were present and might have subscribed to a new treaty in accordance with its provisions, that it be with the consent of three-fourths of the Indians, which supposedly meant the grown people, although the treaty did not so state. The Indians were given to understand that the whites must have the land, so that they became alarmed, and most of them threatened war. ”

“ Never, until the new light burst upon us, that hundreds of Indian treaties, made during a period of half a century, under almost every administration of the government, concluded and ratified with all the solemn forms of the constitution, and containing the most explicit guarantees and obligations of protection to the Indians, and of security to their possessions, were mere nullities, was it supposed competent to effect a compulsory removal of the Indians beyond the Mississippi. It is true, that the policy of removing them has been long entertained ”

“ That it required the United States absolutely and at all hazards to extinguish such titles, and to take from the Indians a strip of land 40 miles in width through the entire territory, and open it to settlement, is not only inconsistent with their treaties and with their agreement with the company, but one which involved a grave disturbance, if not practically the upsetting, of a long-established Indian government. ”

“ Millions more were spent in these wars than would have met every obligation under the treaties. Superintendents, agents, and army officers in the field sent appeal after appeal to the Government to act upon the treaties and stop the useless destruction. One agent, sending in the pleas of several still friendly Indian chiefs, writes:
"After reading this I think that you, sir, must agree with me in thinking that humanity, as well as justice, makes it an imperative duty of Government to adopt some plan by which the Indians can be separated from the whites. ”