From 1778 to 1871 the United States signed 375 official treaties with Indigenous nations.1 Many of these treaties involved Indigenous cession of land to the US in exchange for the right for Indigenous people to use that land, or in other cases the Indigenous people were brutally forced to leave their homeland entirely and move to an entirely new area as part of the treaty requirements. The question then arises: were these treaties willingly signed by Indigenous nations or was there an element of coercion involved? Before attempting to answer that question, it is important to note that this question is fairly general. Though there were many treaties signed in various ways with different motivations and consequences, this essay will attempt to highlight the majority of Indigenous-US treaties and analyze the issue as a whole.
In analyzing the question of whether the treaties between Indigenous nations and the United States government were coercive is the question of how each party involved perceived treaty making. Coming from the mindset shared by European countries, the United States brought with it a land-focused perspective of treaties that thought of land as a commodity that could be exchanged for monetary value or other benefits.2 Indigenous nations meanwhile had been making treaties for centuries, but in a different way. They saw treaties as a shared agreement made in the presence of the spiritual world that emphasized community relationships and collectivism.3 This is symbolized by the Dish With One Spoon law which was a general agreement among Indigenous people that defines land as a shared hunting ground among multiple nations, with each nation showing respect by not hunting excessively, allowing for other tribes to hunt, and leaving enough for the animals to repopulate.4 When one party creating the treaties sees land as being owned explicitly by a person or group of people and the other sees it as something collective for many to use, it’s no surprise that there was an inherent disconnect going into the treaties. But with that all being said, I don’t believe that the disconnect in approaches to treaty making makes the treaties any less coercive.
By 1800, the population of the United States was roughly 5 million people and the Indigenous population was approximately 600,000, and that difference would only continue to grow in the 19th century.5 When two parties go into treaty making with such a difference in ideology and such a difference in numbers where one of the parties is intent on conquering the land of the other, it’s hard for there to be a real compromise that both sides are satisfied with. The primary driving force for the United States was land and expanding its borders, justified by the idea of Manifest Destiny and that it was their God given right to do so, with little care for Indigenous life. Nowhere is this lack of regard for Indigenous life seen better than in the case of the Treaty of New Echota in 1835 which led to over 3,000 deaths in the “Trail of Tears.” This Treaty of New Echota was signed by the United States government and a minority of the Cherokee nation who agreed to move west, though they only did so because they saw it as their only choice.6 Following this, most Cherokees like Elizabeth Brown Stephens (pictured below) that had no input about the treaties were forcibly rounded up by US troops who outnumbered,
and out armed them, resulting in thousands being forced to leave their home in the Mississippi
valley where they had lived for centuries.
Photograph of Elizabeth “Betsy” Brown Stephens, a Cherokee woman who walked on the Trail of Tears. Accessed by Wikimedia Commons: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Stephens.jpg. Public Domain.
The final and, in my opinion, most important question in considering if the treaties were coercive is asking what would have happened if Indigenous nations had refused to sign the treaties? As I mentioned before, the US saw its primary mission in the 19th century as extending its borders from sea to sea. Though it is only a hypothetical, it’s hard to imagine a nation like the US which is that much stronger with a goal of “conquering” the continent respecting the wishes of Indigenous nations. It is especially hard to imagine considering the treaty rights and wishes of Indigenous nations today are not being respected, and that’s more than 100 years after Manifest Destiny was supposed to have ended. If the Indigenous nations were aware, as they likely were, that saying no was not an option, then that fact alone makes the treaties clearly coercive. Without the option to say no, the Indigenous people had no real choice in the matter that wouldn’t have led to a major conflict. Looking at all the evidence, the approaches to treaty making and the unfair application of the treaties, it is hard to look at the situation as a whole and say treaty making between the US government and Indigenous nations was anything but coercive.
1 Martin Case, “Lay of the Land,” in Relentless Business of Treaties: How Indigenous Land Became U.S. Property (Saint Paul, Minnesota: Historical Press Society, 2018), 4.
2 Ibid, 7-9.
3 Leanne Simpson, “Looking after Gdoo-Naaganinaa: Precolonial Nishnaabeg Diplomatic and Treaty Relationships,” Wicazo Sa Review 23, no. 2 (2008): 29, https://doi.org/10.1353/wic.0.0001.
4 Ibid, 37-38.
5 U.S. Census Bureau, “1800 U.S. Census, Accessed October 29, 2021, https://www.census.gov/history/www/through_the_decades/fast_facts/1800_fast_facts.html.
6 Colin Calloway, First Peoples: A Documentary Survey of American Indian History (Boston, MA: Bedford/St. Martin’s, Macmillan Learning, 2019), 265.
Bibliography
“1800 Fast Facts – History – U.S. Census Bureau.” United States Census Bureau. Accessed
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Calloway, Colin. First Peoples: A Documentary Survey of American Indian History.
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Case, Martin. “The Lay of the Land.” Introduction. In Relentless Business of Treaties:
How Indigenous Land Became U.S. Property, 3–12. Saint Paul, Minnesota Historical Society Press, 2018.
Lmaotru. Elizabeth (Brown) Stephens, 2010 [Original Photograph: 1903]. Accessed by Wikimedia Commons: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Stephens.jpg. Public Domain.
Simpson, Leanne. “Looking after Gdoo-Naaganinaa: Precolonial Nishnaabeg
Diplomatic and Treaty Relationships.” Wicazo Sa Review 23, no. 2 (2008): 29-42.
https://doi.org/10.1353/wic.0.0001.
Westerman, Gwen, and Bruce White. Mni Sota Makoce: The Land of the Dakota. St.
Paul, MN: Minnesota Historical Society Press, 2012.
