Anyone doing Indian history has to take account of Indian treaties. I began reading them nearly forty years ago, as a graduate student poring over the manuscript records of innumerable Indian councils in the British Museum and the Public Records Office (now the National Archives) in London. But many scholars have thought about treaties, … talked about them, and written about them long before I took on this project. In addition to those whom I have cited in the notes and bibliography, an incomplete list of individuals I remember talking with, listening to, and learning from over the years must include N. Bruce Duthu, the late William N. Fenton and the late Francis Jennings, Laurence M. Hauptman, Frederick E. Hoxie, Francis Paul Prucha, K. Tsianina Lomawaima, Heidi Kiiwetinepinesiik Stark, the late Helen Hornbeck Tanner, Dale Turner, Jace Weaver, and David Wilkins. They and other friends and scholars fueled my interest in Indian treaties at one time or another even if they didn’t know it, although they bear no responsibility for this book.
A few had more direct influence. William Campbell and I found ourselves studying the Treaty of Fort Stanwix at about the same time; for Bill it was the core of his dissertation—now his first book—and for me it was a story that had to be told in the book I was envisioning. I am grateful to Bill for sharing his manuscript with me and for reading my chapter on Stanwix. I am indebted to Theda Perdue for reading and commenting on the chapter on New Echota. Not for the first time (and I’m sure not for the last) I called on my good friend and colleague Bruce Duthu to cast his expert eye over what I had to say about treaties in modern America. I would not have found Howling Wolf’s drawing of the Medicine Lodge treaty council without Joyce M. Szabo, and Sharon Muhlfeld first provided me, many years ago, with the original reference for the pen and ink witchcraft quotation. Ned Blackhawk and a second, anonymous, reviewer carefully read the manuscript for Oxford University Press and provided thoughtful comments and insightful suggestions that helped me to bring out the story more effectively.
In completing the research for this book, I benefited enormously from the assistance of good staff members at the Baker/Berry Library and Rauner Library of Dartmouth College; at the National Archives at College Park, Maryland; and at the Manuscripts and Archives Division of the New York Public Library. For assistance in acquiring illustrations and sometimes other materials, I am grateful to Josh Shaw at Rauner Library; Bridgeman Art Library International–New York; Chicago History Museum; Washington State Historical Society; Library and Archives, Canada; Pennsylvania Historical Society; New-York Historical Society; New York State Library; Oklahoma Historical Society; University of Oklahoma Western History Collections; History Colorado (the Colorado Historical Society); and the National Anthropological Archives and Human Studies Film Archives of the Smithsonian Institution.
As in all my writing and teaching, I use the terms “Native American” and “Indian” interchangeably. I also use “tribe” and “nation” interchangeably when describing Native American tribal nations, and I do not mean to suggest that they are either less than or the same as nation-states. I recognize that the tribal names that appear in historic records and later histories often reflect other people’s names for the nations in question, not the names the people used to identify themselves, and sometimes not the preferred names today. However, though respectful to the peoples involved, replacing anglicized names with the tribes’ own names causes other problems. Many readers might recognize Haudenosaunee as a more appropriate term for the Iroquois, and some might recognize Kanien’kehaka as Mohawk, but applying this practice consistently to every Indian nation mentioned in the book would confront readers with a bewildering array of unfamiliar terms. For this reason, I suspect, Taiaiake Alfred replaces Mohawk with Kanien’kehaka as the appropriate name for his own nation, but he continues to use anglicized names like Sioux, Cheyenne, and Cherokee when referring to other people.1 Rather than privileging just a few tribes with their own names, I have opted for consistency, using the anglicized names more familiar to most readers, except in cases like Dakota and Lakota, which are not only commonly recognized but also specify particular divisions of the Sioux.