Indian Treaty-Making Policy in the United States and Canada, 1867-1877

Abstract

During the last three decades of the nineteenth century Canada and the United States embarked on major diplomatic ventures with the Indian peoples of the Plains and Prairie West. Both nations employed the treaty, long a tool in North American Indian-white relations. In this study Jill St. Germain presents a pioneering examination of the treaty-making policies of Canada and the United States in the nineteenth century, comparing the major treaties negotiated in the Numbered Treaties concluded with the Cree, Ojibwey, and Blackfoot in Canada and in the United States with the Sioux, Cheyenne, Kiowa, and Comanche. She explores the common roots of Indian policy in the two nations and charts the divergences in the application of the reserve and 'civilization' policies that both governments embedded in treaties as a way to address the 'Indian problem' in the West. St. Germain points out that despite official rhetoric, Canadian Indian policies - often cited as a model the United States ought to have imitated - have been as dismal and fraught with misunderstandings as those enacted by the United States.