NATION TO NATION


The Indians giving a talk to Colonel Bouquet in a conference at a council fire, near his camp on the banks of Muskingum in North America in Oct. 1764. Charles Grignion after Benjamin West. At the treaty conference following Pontiac’s War against the British. Kiyashuta (Seneca), holding a wampum belt, said, “While you hold it fast by one end, and we by the other, we shall always be able to discover anything that may disturb our friendship.”


ognized in 1960 when he declared, “Great na- tions, like great men, should keep their word.” Despite the moral,


legal, historical and


contemporary significance of Indian trea- ties, most Americans know little about them. That fact unsettled the late senator Daniel K. Inouye (D. – Hawaii), the longtime chairman, vice-chairman and member of the Senate Committee on Indian Affairs, who lamented: “I would venture to guess that to the extent they have ever had occasion to think about them, most Americans think of treaties as ancient relics of the past that have long since been forgotten and which certainly have no relevance to modern society.” Said Inouye: “Too few Americans know


that the Indian nations ceded millions of acres of lands to the United States, or that… the promises and commitments made by the United States were typically made in perpetu- ity. History has recorded, however, that our great nation did not keep its word to the In- dian nations, and our preeminent challenge today…is to assure the integrity of our treaty commitments and to bring an end to the era of broken promises.” The National Museum of the American


Indian was established by Congress to rectify our nation’s historical amnesia about the role of Native Nations in the making of modern America. Treaties are at the core of the relation- ship between Indian Peoples and the United


38 AMERICAN INDIAN SUMMER/FALL 2014


LIBRARY OF CONGRESS PRINTS AND PHOTOGRAPHS DIVISION, WASHINGTON, D.C.


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