Description
Book SynopsisIndian peoples made some four hundred treaties with the United States between the American Revolution and 1871, when Congress prohibited them. They signed nine treaties with the Confederacy, as well as countless others over the centuries with Spain, France, Britain, Mexico, the Republic of Texas, Canada, and even Russia, not to mention individual colonies and states. In retrospect, the treaties seem like well-ordered steps on the path of dispossession and empire. The reality was far more complicated.In Pen and Ink Witchcraft, eminent Native American historian Colin G. Calloway narrates the history of diplomacy between North American Indians and their imperial adversaries, particularly the United States. Treaties were cultural encounters and human dramas, each with its cast of characters and conflicting agendas. Many treaties, he notes, involved not land, but trade, friendship, and the resolution of disputes. Far from all being one-sided, they were negotiated on the Indians'' cultural a
Trade Reviewthe book is especially well-written. Its narrative flows easily through the tortuous paths (both literal and figurative) of treaty making, while always giving proper attention to Native agency and hitherto forgotten historical players ... Suited both for the student and for the historian of American expansionism ... Pen and Ink Witchcraft will be a valuable addition to libraries and classrooms. * Phillip H. Round, American Hisorical Review *
Table of ContentsAcknowledgments ; Ch. 1: Treaty Making in Colonial America: The Many Languages of Indian Diplomacy ; Ch. 2: Fort Stanwix, 1768: Shifting Boundaries ; Ch. 3: Treaty Making, American-Style ; Ch. 4: New Echota, 1835: Implementing Removal ; Ch. 5: Treaties in the West ; Ch. 6: Medicine Lodge, 1867: Containment on the Plains ; Ch. 7: The Death and Rebirth of Indian Treaties ; Appendix: The Treaties ; Notes ; Bibliography ; Index
