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Original Treaties
Treaties between Native American Nations and the U.S. are negotiated and approved by U.S. Congress to establish borders and conditions of behaviour. -
Treaty with the Delawares
The Delawares were one of the few Native allies to the Confederacy of States against the British, becoming the first Native Nation to sign a treaty with what is now the US. The treaty acknowledged the Delawares' territorial rights and set forth a military alliance. Within a year Congress broke the terms of the treaty repeatedly, causing the Delawares to switch allegiance to the British. This treaty set precedent for formal treaties which remained the primary form of agreement from 1789 to 1871. -
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American quest for new land
After the successful revolution, growing American populations look for new lands. Authors of the Constitution give Federal Government the sole right to purchase Native American lands to prevent further war. -
Treaty with the Creeks
The Treaty affirmed Creek Nation's right to land they had not ceded in previous treaties. The US sought to encourage tribes to abandon hunting and adopt ‘civilized agricultural practices’, hoping that tribal hunting land would thus be freed up for non-Indian settlement. -
Treaty of Canandaigua/Pickering Treaty
Six Nations established allegience to the new U.S. government after the Revolutionary War. More than a million acres were returned to the Haudenosaunee people. -
Treaty with the Chickasaw
This Treaty enabled trade routes through tribal territories, but also meant increased settlement. -
War of 1812
The war was a shortlived spat between the US who were displeased with new trade restrictions and deployment of American soldiers by the British. Afterwards, Native Americans posed less of a military threat to the US because they could no longer ally with the British, so Treaty negotiations increasingly favoured Americans. -
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Rising immigration
Rising immigration to the United States expands the country’s population and settlers' demand for land -
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Removal from homelands
Defined by removal from homelands, some tribes attempt to assimilate in hope to remain on their ancestral homelands. -
The Indian Removal Act
Congress passed the act during the presidency of Andrew Jackson. Emigration was initially voluntary, but military legally removed Native Americans from their ancestral grounds with the use of force. -
Treaty with the Potawatomi
The Potawatomi had defended their land through the first half of the century. After the Us failed to follow through with their agreement to respect the Potawatomi peoples' right to their ancestral grounds in a Treaty in 1932 and one that would swap cash for land in 1934, the final treaty forced the tribe to move west. -
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From the Reservation to Assimilation?
The government move many Native Americans from their homelands (largely against will) onto reservations West of the Mississippi to make way for settlement. -
Horse Creek Treaty
All nine Native Nations of the Great Plains are invited for treaty council at the mouth of Horse Creek, designating nations’ respective territories. The Nations are represented by two negotiators from the U.S. Office of Indian Affairs in the largest gathering of Plains Nations in history with between ten thousand and fifteen thousand predicted to be present -
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Tribal Delegations to the Capital
During the 19th and 20th centuries, Native American leaders travelled to Washington DC to defend tribal interests against pressures of ever-expanding US. Arrived in the capital assuming they could negotiate as equals...Government, through demonstrations of wealth and power i.e. military displays, hoped to convince them of futility in resistance. -
Navajo Treaty
The Navajo become the only Native Nation to use a treaty to escape removal and return to their home as they have been forced to defend their ancestral grounds from Mexican and New Mexican slave traders. -
The Indian Appropriations Act of 1871
The House of Representatives ceases to recognise individual tribes within the United States as independent nations “with whom the United States may contract by Treaty.” Negative effects of this act continue for nearly a century, until Federal Indian Policy dramatically change again, encouraging Native American tribes to exercise self-governance over tribal matters. -
Winnebago Resistance
Winnebago tribe are removed from their homeland in Wisconsin 11 times between 1836 and 1874, but returned home after each removal. The government never force them out of Wisconsin again, and they are eventually granted the right to homestead in Wisconsin. New legislation in 1881 allows the Winnebago tribe to purchase land in their ancestral homeland – a rare exception to the treatment experienced by other Native Americans. -
Wounded Knee Massacre
In an attempt to subdue the Lakota tribe, US soldiers open fire and kill up to 300 Native Americans, near Wounded Knee Creek on the Lakota Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in the U.S. state of South Dakota. -
Citizenship granted to WWI soldiers
President Warren G. Harding grants citizenship to all Native Americans who served in WWI. -
Indian Citizenship Act
The Act grants all Native Americans citizenship, yet many still cannot vote as this is determined by state. -
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Indian Termination Policy
The Indian Termination Policy contains a range of policies intended to assimilate Native Americans in order to terminate tribes. -
Indian Relocation Act
The Act offers to compensate the cost of moving and vocational training to Native Americans willing to leave Native land. The goal is to encourage assimilation. -
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Rise in Native American activism
Activism for Native American rights is occassionally violent, leading to the 1975 Indian Self-Determination and Education Assistance Act, which give government agencies the power to enter into contracts and give grants to recognised tribes. -
Indian Civil Rights Act
Native Americans are guaranteed protection by most sections of the Bill of Rights while imposing restrictions offered by the U.S. constitution. The Act is intrusive of Native governmental affairs. -
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AIM
Members of Minneapolis's Native American community found the American Indian Movement (AIM). The original purpose is to help displaced Native Americans living in urban ghettos but this grows to encompass a range of issues faced by First Peoples including revitalization of culture, tribal autonomy, and economic independence. -
Orme Dam will not go ahead
After 10 years of organising and protesting the building of the Orme Dam, the Fort McDowell Yavapai Nation of Arizona wins the struggle. The dam was a Central Arizona Project plan that would have flooded more than half the Fort McDowell Yavapai Nation reservation, most of their farmland, and the remnants of ancestral homeland. The Fort McDowell Yavapai Nation hold an annual weekend-long celebration called the Orme Dam Victory Days to commemorate the event. -
Minnesota v. Mille Lacs Band of Chippewa
After a nine year legal battle against the state of Minnesota, the Supreme Court of the United States confirms the land rights of the Mille Lacs Band of the Chippewa Nations which had been ceded by the federal government. -
Apology to Native Americans
The Apology to Native Peoples of the United States is embedded in the Defense Appropriations Act.
