Broken Treaties: United States and Canadian Relations with the Lakotas and the Plains Cree, 1868-1885

2. Expectations and Promises

27 The grand councils on the western Plains and Prairies that produced the Treaty of 1868 and Treaty Six brought together peoples of very different cultural patterns. For representatives of the United States and Canada it was only natural to reduce days of earnest deliberations to a written text conveying the agreed-upon concessions, rights, and obligations. The Lakotas and the Plains Cree, however, operated within oral cultures. Although aware of the European propensity for recording agreements with pen and parchment, they themselves did not conlne understanding of treaty engagements to a tangible script and valued spoken commitments as much as written ones. In order to evaluate the treaty records of the Lakotas and the Plains Cree, along with those of the United States and Canada, therefore, it is necessary to appreciate the standards to which each side held itself as well as the other, and this requires an examination of treaty negotiations together with the resulting documents. Negotiating the Treaty of 1868 The Indian Peace Commission had several tasks before it in 1867. The directive to solicit Lakota grievances and take measures to redress them was calculated to arrest conmicts in progress on the Northern Plains. The plan to establish a reservation for the exclusive use of the Lakotas would serve immediate U.S. needs by removing the Indians north of the major lines of east-west immigrant traflc, but it was also expected to encourage permanent settlement, thus contributing to a lasting peace. Terms “to insure 2 Expectations and Promises 28 Expectations and Promises the civilization of the Indians” were the lnal component of the blueprint for peace on the Plains. Through the autumn of 1867 and into the spring of 1868 the Peace Commission worked assiduously to achieve these goals and on the occasion of major councils with the Lakotas made plain its intentions. Reception to the elaborate scheme varied across the several branches of the Lakota tribe and within them, depending on their own conceptions of the future. The commission wasted little time in getting to work, and on August 31, 1867, it convened the lrst general council at Fort Sully on the Missouri River, hosting bands from the seven divisions of the Lakotas. Fort Sully was a rallying center for the friendly Lakotas of the region, many of whom were settled semi-permanently in the vicinity. Several of these bands were signatories of the 1865 treaties negotiated by the Edmunds Commission; these treaties, having failed to secure the goodwill of the hostiles, had effectively lapsed. U.S. failure to honor the terms of those treaties was a general complaint in 1867.1 Demands for the promised agricultural assistance were especially strident. Long Mandan, a Two Kettle, declared, “Our grandfather promised us implements to work the soil with. I never saw any of them yet. I want you to bring all that I want to cultivate the ground with so that I can go to work next spring. I cannot work the ground with my hands. I want a plow, a cultivator, and a small plow.”2 Burnt Face, a Sans Arc, touched on a sore point, noting, “We are friendly, but we gain nothing by it.”3 Buffalo had been scarce along the Missouri River for years, obliging either westward migration with the herds or a change of course among the Lakotas. Not surprisingly, this imperative had split the different bands along economic lines, and those who opted to stay looked to the United States to facilitate their agricultural efforts. The treaties of 1865 had promised them this aid, and in 1867 they reiterated their needs with specilc requests for cattle, horses, plows, seed, wagons, and agricultural instructors. Burnt Face added rations to the list, for “you cannot work all day right Expectations and Promises 29 along without anything to eat.”4 Most of those gathered at Fort Sully were prepared to establish a permanent settlement. Two Kettle speakers Long Mandan and Two Lance assured General Sherman that four of the seven bands present had selected a site at the mouth of the Big Cheyenne River on the Missouri for this purpose.5 In expressing their wishes for agricultural assistance and the designation of an agency location, these bands were looking to their own interests for the future, not submitting to U.S. “civilization ” designs, though these objectives coincided in some ways. They were equally concerned with the security of their lands and...