Did You Know…
Indians granted rights to the United states
It was the Indian tribes which granted the U.S. rights to lands – generally in exchange for peace, protection, less desirable lands, annuities, rations, manufactured goods, and services. This is sometimes a confusing concept for non-Indians to understand at first, but it is straight forward.
Indian tribes with which the U.S. made treaties were considered to have specific prior rights of ownership in their lands, which they had held long before the U.S. became a nation. Non-Indians often call these Native rights “Indian title”, “rights of occupancy”, or “aboriginal rights”. The U.S. government wanted to acquire most, if not all, of the tribes’ lands for various reasons, e.g., to resell or grant settlers, commercial interests, or others some time in the future. Through 1871, the treaty process was the main legal way to do this.
When a treaty involved some sort of land transfer (many, but not all, did), it typically stated in one section that the tribe or tribes concerned would “cede, relinquish, and convey to the United States all their right, title, and interest…” in a large tract of specified land, often exceeding millions of acres. Often, a subsequent section of the treaty would “reserve” a smaller area of the Indians’ lands which they would keep for the use and occupancy of the tribe(s). Thus a “reservation” was created out of what was left. The Indian tribes, as recognized governments, retained or reserved the sovereign rights they had not granted to the U.S.
A brief quote from the milestone Supreme Court case of United States v. Winans (1905) summarizes the overall point: “The treaty was not a grant of rights to the Indians, but a grant of rights from them…”. The frequently heard term “treaty rights” thus refers to the rights explicitly and implicitly retained by the tribe and not rights granted by the U.S. government. It also refers to those obligations which the government owed the tribe in exchange for its lands as well as other consideration from the federal government.
American Indians Jack Utter
