NATION TO NATION
Peace Commissioners in Council with the Arapaho and Cheyenne Indians, 1868. A scene from the Fort Laramie peace negotiations photographed by Alexander Gardner (1821–1888). I
America’s Founding Fathers accepted as an article of faith that American Indian tribes were independent nations. After the Ameri- can Revolution, President George Washington and Secretary of War Henry Knox recognized tribes as autonomous polities, and embraced treaties – the quintessential symbol of inter- national diplomacy – as the most expedient means of conducting U.S. Indian policy. As pressure for Indian Removal mounted, some Americans began to question the legitimacy of – and necessity for treaty negotiations with – tribal nations. Yet these voices had little im- pact on treaty-making. As the primary vehicles for acquiring tribal lands, Indian treaties were effective tools for U.S. western expansion. The pace of treaty-making reached a crescendo during the 1860s, when 59 Indian treaties were ratified by the Senate. It was during this decade that a crusade to prohibit Indian treaty-making gathered momentum. Post-Civil War critics of Indian treaty- making came from many walks of life. Re- formers, government officials, military men, politicians and clergymen all viewed treaties as symbols of everything that was wrong with U.S.–Indian policy. Far from being indepen-
42 AMERICAN INDIAN SUMMER/FALL 2014
dent nations, said Henry B. Whipple, Protestant Episcopal Bishop of Minnesota, Indian tribes were “wards,” entirely dependent for survival on the U.S. government. As such, Whipple concluded, “it was time for the government to cease treating heathen communit[ies]”. . . as . . . independent nation[s] . . .” Many agreed. In 1868, the Congressionally appointed Indian Peace Commission urged lawmakers to end Indian treaty-making, and one year later, the Board of Indian Commissioners, appointed by President U.S. Grant to reform Indian af- fairs, reached the same conclusion. Perhaps the most influential critic of treaty- making was U.S. Commissioner of Indian Af- fairs Ely S. Parker. A Tonawanda Seneca from upstate New York, and General U.S. Grant’s military secretary during the Civil War, Parker used his office to advocate forcefully for the abolition of treaty-making with Indian tribes. “A treaty involves the idea of a compact be- tween two or more sovereign powers,” Parker observed in his annual Report of the Com- missioner for Indian Affairs, “each possessing sufficient authority and force to compel a compliance with the obligations incurred.” But Indian tribes, he continued, “are not
sovereign nations, capable of making treaties.” America’s treaty-making tradition, Parker ob- served, had imbued Indians with a false sense
of “national independence,” which was belied by their status as “wards of the government.” Concluded Parker: the U.S. should “cease the cruel farce of . . . dealing with its helpless and ignorant wards” through treaties. It is difficult to know if Parker truly inter-
nalized the anti-treaty-making spirit of the age, or if he felt forced to kowtow to the new “party line.” If the latter, Parker’s decision to take the line of least resistance speaks volumes about the magnitude of anti-treaty-making sentiment in official Washington. In fact, Parker’s public pronouncements
mirrored an emerging consensus about tribal nations in modern America. After 1865, the existence of autonomous tribal governments – and the necessity of negotiating treaties with them – seemed incompatible with the unified and newly empowered nation that emerged from the Civil War.
II
Begun to preserve the Union, the Civil War spawned what the historian Eric Foner has called “a new American nation-state” with vast- ly expanded power and authority. Prompted by the need to mobilize the Union’s resources to wage modern war, the federal government initiated policies that would transform the
PHOTO ARCHIVES, NATIONAL MUSEUM OF THE AMERICAN INDIAN P15390
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