Before Europeans came to North America, Native people governed themselves and maintained diplomatic relations with one another. Native Americans usually were members of independent, or sovereign, nations that negotiated government-to-government agreements—like treaties—with one another over trade, hunting, and other issues of mutual concern. Tribes practiced diplomacy with one another to settle conflicts or permit entry into their homelands. Diplomatic relations were accompanied by strict protocols and thorough negotiations. In songs, dances, feasts, and speeches, past wrongs were set aside and hopes for future goodwill were expressed. Only then would discussions begin. Agreements were sometimes sanctified by ceremonies that created family connections. Some treaty-making failed & warfare could ensue.
When Europeans arrived in America, they made alliances with the Native American nations they encountered. To acquire land and establish peace and friendship, French and British colonial officials negotiated written agreements with leaders of tribal nations. For American Indians, the spoken word was sacred. People were expected to honor agreements, the details of which were passed down over generations through mnemonic (memory) devices such as birch bark scrolls and wampum belts. After the American Revolution, the law of the land was “All Treaties made, or which shall be made, under the Authority of the United States, shall be the supreme Law of the Land; and the Judges in every State shall be bound thereby. “ — United States Constitution, article VI, clause 2
Native Americans Treaties were the means that Europeans & Americans used to secure alliances with, & most often acquire land from, Native Americans. Historians disagree about the number of treaties negotiated between European powers & the United States between 1492 & the end of the formal treaty-making period in 1871. Because municipalities, companies, & state & national governments all made treaties, the number may well be in the thousands.
After Christopher Columbus discovered the New World for Spain in 1492, Spanish explorers & conquistadors used the Caribbean as a base from which to explore North & South America. At first, conquistadors ruthlessly took land from Native Americans, whom they considered heathen or subhuman. By the 1540s, however, Spanish cleric Francisco de Vitoria was already trying to convince the Spanish Crown & its explorers that Indians were indeed human, & thus Spain should treat them with respect rather than take land by conquest. Vitoria succeeded. As friars began to supersede conquistadors on the frontier of New Spain in an attempt to Christianize Native Americans, they introduced a treaty system.
Other nations followed suit. France, less interested in planting permanent colonies but eager to establish a footing in North America, negotiated agreements with native groups that enabled them to fish & trade in peace. Over time, French colonial officials & priests used treaties to secure an extensive web of relationships that guarded the western borders of their North American domain & ensured access to the rich fur trade of the Great Lakes region.
The Dutch used treaties. Like the French, Dutch traders forged agreements with local tribes to gain access to the western fur trade. Settlers in the lower Hudson valley also purchased land & the rights to certain hunting areas with trade goods.
English settlers tried warfare & brutality to cow Native Americans. The English at Jamestown, Virginia, tried to negotiate treaties with local tribes, even attempting at one point to "crown" Powhatan, the leader of a Chesapeake Confederacy, "king" of the Indians (Powhatan Confederacy). Powhatan's own ambitions & the Englishmen's ongoing desire for new farmlands under-mined these efforts, however. The parties maintained a fragile peace during Powhatan's lifetime (a peace sealed with the marriage of his daughter Pocahontas to an English planter), but after his death the chief's brother, Opechancanugh, reignited warfare with the English.
In New England, Pilgrim settlers on Cape Cod negotiated informal agreements with local Wampanoags that allowed them to settle at Plymouth, Massachusetts. Their Puritan brethren followed a similar path when they settled in Boston in 1630. Eventually, however, the English crowded members of the Nipmuck, Narragansett, & Wampanoag tribes onto reservations in Massachusetts. In 1675 the Wampanoag leader Metacomet, known to the English as King Philip, launched a war against the Puritans. Metacomet led warriors from all three groups against the English in the two-year struggle. Puritans won, but only after losing one-sixth of their male population. Ironically, while the English victory meant the end of an era of peaceful treaty making, it was made possible by the assistance of Hudson valley groups who refused to come to Philip's assistance because of their treaty commitments to the British.
During the eighteenth century, the strength of Native American confederacies, imperial threats from other nations, & a renewed interest in empire & mercantilism by the Crown (joint-stock companies had arranged early English settlements with little or no interest from the Crown) convinced England to rely more on diplomacy & treaties in relations with Native Americans. King George's War (1744–1748), which saw England & France vying for control of the Ohio River valley (and subsequently North America), was an example.
The Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle ended King George's War, but in truth it decided nothing. Both France & England jockeyed for position in preparation for renewed warfare. Native Americans, however, did not understand military truces, for once they proclaimed themselves enemies of another they intended to stay that way. French colonists capitalized on that confusion in an attempt to draw some of the Iroquois Confederacy (the Senecas, Cayugas, Onondagas, Oneidas, & Mohawks who had earlier laid claim to the Ohio valley) away from their ally, England. To the south, at the mouth of the Mississippi River in New Orleans, French agents scored treaties with Creeks, Chickasaws, & some Cherokees.
Pennsylvania traders, led by George Croghan, realized that the British Navy had so devastated French trade routes that French Native American allies could not get the trade goods they wanted. In August 1748, Croghan & fellow traders signed the Treaty of Logstown with leaders of the Delawares, Shawnees, Iroquois, & Wyandotte Native Americans. It established a perpetual trade & defensive alliance between England & the Native Americans.
In the French & Native American War (1754–1763), the last of the great wars for the British Empire, the Iroquois Confederacy remained allied with England but did little in the way of fighting against France. The confederacy did not want to be enemies with France if France won the war. British victory in 1763 saw a deterioration in relations with the confederacy, which itself became plagued with infighting.
Upon taking control of all of North America to the Mississippi River, England encountered more trouble with former French-allied Native Americans. In 1763 on the upper Ohio, an Ottawa chief named Pontiac & an alliance of Native Americans attacked Americans (still British subjects) headed west. British soldiers put down Pontiac's rebellion, but England realized it had to conduct aggressive diplomacy with western Native Americans to make the region safe for settlement.
Parliament passed the Proclamation of 1763, which prohibited Americans from settling west of the Appalachian Mountains. The proclamation would enable Parliament to both control land dispersal & establish treaties with Native Americans before Americans took the land.
The spread of Americans to the West scared Native Americans. In an attempt to create a permanent boundary between whites & Native Americans, William Johnson, the English Native American commissioner for the North, & John Stuart, an agent in the South, treated with the Iroquois Nations in 1768. The Treaty of Fort Stanwix negotiated such a line, but failed to halt the westward white movement.
