were considered nations, and though circumstances varied greatly, the U.S. government made treaties with Indians for two main reasons. First, the United States had to make treaties, because Indian tribes were powerful. They had command of routes of travel, many warriors, and plenty of resources when the United States had very little of any of these. The second reason was cynical: paper was cheaper than bullets. Despite the power of Indian tribes, it was often the case that the United States had no intention of honoring the treaties it made. Treaties were a way to reduce the power of tribes. Nonetheless, Indian tribes were so much on the mind of the revolutionaries that they included a special clause in the U.S. Constitution: only Congress had the power to regulate trade with Indian tribes and, furthermore, only the federal government (the president and the Senate) had the right to make treaties, as the “supreme law of the land,” with Indian tribes. In the 1870s, the House of Representatives, which felt left out of the treaty-making process, effectively put a stop to the process unless the representatives could be involved.
Treaties—between tribes and European colonial powers, and between tribes and the newly formed U.S. government, had long been the “law of the land,” but it wasn’t until the Indian Appropriations Act of 1851 that the modern Indian reservation was born. At the time the U.S. government was in a quandary. It felt it needed room for the country to grow—and except for overseas colonial expansion, the only direction in which the country could grow was west—but Indians were in the way. All-out war with the tribes would be too costly, and the outcome—given the strength and position of many Indian tribes—would be far from certain. The U.S. government wanted to avoid the kind of conflict that had hurt the British so badly during the Seven Years’ War and Pontiac’s War. To repeat, then: frontier wars were costly and bloody, and their outcome (since they are fought against shifting tribal alliances of Indians who knew and controlled the terrain, with extended supply lines, and with so many unprotected settlers at risk) was unclear. Until 1851 the U.S. government had used two conflicting policies—assimilation and removal. But with the Appropriations Act, the policy became removal and containment. Instead of large tracts of land positioned in the way of western expansion, smaller, contained parcels of Indian land were seen as the answer. The Indian Appropriations Act, the first step in this process, empowered the U.S. government to enter into treaties with Indian tribes and to set aside land, money, and supplies for their establishment.
Following the passage of the Indian Appropriations Act of 1851 the United States embarked on an almost compulsive policy of making treaties with tribes, most of whom wanted some certainty of their continued existence and some autonomy in the face of increasing pressure from white settlers. From Texas to Minnesota and from Lake Michigan to the Pacific, tribes great and small found themselves at the negotiating table with the United States. The usual formula, if not the result, was quite simple: Indian tribes relinquished title to some of their lands and reserved the remainder for themselves. These remaining portions were called “reservations.” In Ojibwe the word for “reservation” is “ishkonigan,” which means, rather sardonically, “leftovers.” In addition to the reserved land, where Indians were supposed to be able to live unmolested and on their own terms, the treaties usually had other provisions involving what are known as “treaty rights.” These rights—to hunt, fish, gather, harvest timber—were many and usually extended to the territories outside the reservation that the tribe used to control, known as ceded territories.
Reservations sprang up from Oklahoma to Neah Bay, in the remote northwest corner of Washington state. Some of them were established in the ancestral homelands of the tribe in question. The Sioux of Pine Ridge, Rosebud, and Cheyenne River live, more or less, where they always did, in portions of their original homeland. The Pueblo still occupy the pueblos they have lived in for thousands of years. In fact, one of the oldest continuously occupied cities in North America is Acoma Pueblo; people have been living there nonstop since the twelfth century. But some reservations were established hundreds of miles away and the tribe, as part of the treaty, agreed to move to its new land.
This is what happened to some of the Ho-Chunk, formerly called the Winnebago. They were once the dominant force on the western shores of Lake Michigan, but their population plummeted from about 20,000 in 1620 to about 1,000 in 1820. Beginning in the nineteenth century many, but not all, Ho-Chunk were moved from Wisconsin to Minnesota, from there to South Dakota, then to Iowa, and finally to Nebraska. Many did not like their new reservation and, traveling at night, walked back to Wisconsin. In all, the Ho-Chunk were subjected to nine removal orders, and their survival and expansion in the twentieth century are a heartening story of toughness, tenacity, and courage. Likewise, some Seneca from upstate New York were removed to Oklahoma. Sac and Fox from Wisconsin wound up in Iowa, Oklahoma, and even Mexico. Apache were sent from the southwest to Florida. Seminole were removed from Florida and sent to Oklahoma. Connections to place and culture were compromised and sometimes totally destroyed.
The early to mid-nineteenth century was dark for Indian tribes. White encroachment continued. The newly formed reservations mostly were run under the auspices of an Indian agent, commissioned under the Department of War. The Indian agent hired tribal police, administered annuities and other treaty payments, and was responsible for economic development. More often than not Indian agents were drawn from unscrupulous people. Fraud, cronyism, nepotism, double-dealing, skimming, and outright murder were common.
By the early 1880s—just 100 years since the Treaty of Fort Pitt and three decades since the Indian Appropriations Act had ushered in the modern reservation period—almost everyone recognized that the reservation system was a failure. The policy of containment and control funded by the Indian Appropriations Act hadn’t really done away with Indians as hoped—the Dakota Wars in the 1870s were costly proof of that. And as far as Indians were concerned, the reservation was not what they expected, either: a place to live unmolested and on their own terms. A new policy of “allotment” was put in place with the help of the Dawes Act of 1887. The act authorized the United States to survey and divide lands held in common by Indian tribes and allot them to Indian individuals. Any “extra” land was to return to the U.S. government, which could then give it to settlers, lumber companies, mining companies, and railroads. On some reservations Indian agents became the largest landholders in the region. Reservations, once places for Indians and Indians only, became a checkerboard of Indian land, white farms, and federal lands. As of today, on Leech Lake, like many other reservations, the tribe owns roughly 4 percent of the land within the reservation boundaries. The rest of the land is divided among county, state, federal, corporate, and private owners.
One of the most serious misconceptions about reservations is that they were a kind of moral payment: that the U.S. government, motivated by pity and guilt, “gave” reservations to Indians along with treaty rights, which functioned as a kind of proto-welfare program. This is not the case. Reservations and treaty rights were concessions negotiated for the right to settle and develop new land. People like Jerry Mueller and Citizens for Truth in Government don’t like this arrangement. I think most Indians would be glad to abrogate our treaties. We will “give up” our reservations and our treaty rights, and all the non-Natives can move east of the Appalachians. Or if they don’t want to move they can pay rent. It would be useful for most Americans to keep in mind that after they pass those mountains they are living, driving, eating, breathing, and walking on land that at one time or another was negotiated for, not fought for. More so than wars, agreements opened the part of America from the Appalachia to the Pacific to non-Indians. Reservations and their sovereignty are the remaining small result of those agreements.
All of this explains and yet does not quite explain Red Lake and why a white trespasser was arrested and fined by Red Lake Reservation conservation officers. Unlike most other reservations in the United States, Red Lake was not created by treaty. The government officially stopped making treaties with Indians in 1871. Red Lake Reservation was established in 1889 by a congressional act. In the years before—as tribes were encouraged and sometimes forced to the treaty table, reservations were established, and communities were moved—the Red Lake Ojibwe watched. They witnessed the treaties of 1825 (Prairie du Chien); 1836 (Michigan); 1837, 1842, and 1854 (Wisconsin and Minnesota); and 1855, 1863, and 1864 (Mississippi and Pillager Bands in Minnesota)—and
