In 1865, a new magazine, aptly titled The Nation, began publication. The emergence of a consolidated nation-state nourished a powerful nationalist ideology. Washington created a national paper currency and banking system, levied new taxes and formed an internal revenue bureau to collect them, imposed a draft to fill the ranks of the army, launched the Freedmen’s Bureau, the nation’s first social welfare agency, and inaugurated a generous pension system for Union Army veterans. Prompted by the need to mobilize the Union’s resources to wage modern war, the federal government initiated policies that would transform the old, decentralized republic into a powerful, centralized national state. IIīegun to preserve the Union, the Civil War spawned what the historian Eric Foner has called “a new American nation-state” with vastly expanded power and authority. 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. In fact, Parker’s public pronouncements mirrored an emerging consensus about tribal nations in modern America. It is difficult to know if Parker truly internalized 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. dealing with its helpless and ignorant wards” through treaties. “A treaty involves the idea of a compact between two or more sovereign powers,” Parker observed in his annual Report of the Commissioner for Indian Affairs, “each possessing sufficient authority and force to compel a compliance with the obligations incurred.”īut Indian tribes, he continued, “are not sovereign nations, capable of making treaties.” America’s treaty-making tradition, Parker observed, 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. 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 Tonawanda Seneca from upstate New York, and General U.S. Perhaps the most influential critic of treaty-making was U.S. Grant to reform Indian affairs, reached the same conclusion. 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. As such, Whipple concluded, “it was time for the government to cease treating heathen communit”. Whipple, Protestant Episcopal Bishop of Minnesota, Indian tribes were “wards,” entirely dependent for survival on the U.S. Far from being independent nations, said Henry B. Reformers, government officials, military men, politicians and clergymen all viewed treaties as symbols of everything that was wrong with U.S.–Indian policy. ![]() Post-Civil War critics of Indian treaty-making came from many walks of life. It was during this decade that a crusade to prohibit Indian treaty-making gathered momentum. The pace of treaty-making reached a crescendo during the 1860s, when 59 Indian treaties were ratified by the Senate. As the primary vehicles for acquiring tribal lands, Indian treaties were effective tools for U.S. Yet these voices had little impact on treaty-making. As pressure for Indian Removal mounted, some Americans began to question the legitimacy of – and necessity for treaty negotiations with – tribal nations. After the American Revolution, President George Washington and Secretary of War Henry Knox recognized tribes as autonomous polities, and embraced treaties – the quintessential symbol of international diplomacy – as the most expedient means of conducting U.S. IĪmerica’s Founding Fathers accepted as an article of faith that American Indian tribes were independent nations. Why did treaty-making with Indian nations fall into disfavor? The answer lies in understanding the transformation of American thought about Indian nations after the Civil War. shall be acknowledged or recognized as an independent nation, tribe or power with whom the United States may contract by treaty….” Although Congress agreed to honor the approximately 368 Indian treaties that had been ratified from 1778 to 1868, Congress stated unequivocally that “henceforth, no Indian nation or tribe. Three years earlier, in 1871, Congress ended formal treaty-making with Indians, obliterating a nearly 100-year-old diplomatic tradition in which the United States recognized tribes as nations. ![]() ![]() The Cherokee leader’s plea for tribal nationhood ran counter to the mainstream American thinking of his day.
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