Treaty of Fort Pitt

Impact

With White Eyes's death while serving as a guide for American troops, the United States lost its main ally among the Delawares. The United States subsequently failed to live up to the promises it had made to the Delawares in the 1778 treaty. Although a fort, named Fort Laurens, was constructed to protect the Delawares, it was never garrisoned sufficiently to fulfill its purpose, something that the Delawares fully realized. They had also been told that the Americans would take Fort Detroit, but repeated attempts by various commanding officers failed to achieve this goal, and the Delawares continued to feel threatened by the relative proximity of this British post. They would furthermore have come under increasing pressure by other tribes owing to the supposed abandonment of their former neutrality.

In April 1779 Colonel Morgan arranged for Delaware leaders to meet with representatives of the Continental Congress to inform them about the misinterpretations of the treaty and the many promises that had not been kept. Instead of addressing their demands, however, American representatives merely asked them to be patient. On this occasion they met with George Washington, the commander in chief of the American army, who told them the king of France had promised help to the Americans, implying that the promises to the Delawares would soon be delivered. During the severe winter of 1779–1780, however, the Delawares were in dire need of food and clothing, but the United States once again failed to make good on its promise of aid. The mood in the Delaware council finally turned, and it decided to ally with the English instead. This had repercussions for the peaceful members of the tribe who continued to live under the guardianship of Moravian missionaries. On March 8, 1782, American militiamen committed a massacre against peaceful Moravian Delawares at Gnadenhutten, Ohio, in retaliation for Delaware raids. Fifty-six adults and thirty-four children were beaten to death and scalped, a decision the militia had made in council. The Delawares had made the decision to switch their allegiance at a time when the military tide was turning in favor of the Americans. When it became obvious that the colonists would win the war, some of the Delawares left the United States for Canada, and others left for Spanish territory.

The lands ceded through the Treaty of Paris of 1783, which ended the War of Independence and secured the United States' independence from Britain, were in parts occupied by Indian nations who had been ignored in the negotiations. In 1783 thirty-five of these tribes, including some Delawares, united in defense against growing intrusions into their lands. The United States, however, believed it had acquired these lands by conquest and through the Treaty of Paris, and it considered all Indian rights to the lands in question to have been extinguished. Attempting to settle the undecided and volatile situation, in the Treaty of Fort McIntosh of 1785 the Delaware, Wyandot, and a few other nations entered into an agreement with the United States against the wishes of the other tribes of the alliance. They agreed to cede lands and to put themselves under the protection of the United States. The remaining tribes of the alliance later renounced this treaty and insisted that the terms of the 1768 Treaty of Fort Stanwix be met, which had established the Ohio River as a boundary line between whites and Indians.

Although the first Indian treaties signed after the end of the Revolution until about 1786 asserted the United States' rights to land by virtue of conquest, in the face of native responses the United States determined that military conflicts with Indians would become unavoidable if this policy continued and that this would incur costs far higher than paying compensation for the recently confiscated lands and the abandonment of the new land policy. Through the passage of the 1787 Northwest Ordinance the United States instead proclaimed the intent to observe the utmost good faith toward the Indians and declared that it would acquire their lands only with their consent.

This new policy was reflected in the treaties the United States entered into with Indians, but treaties increasingly described the lands retained by the Indians rather than the ones to be ceded. Furthermore, treaties with the United States became the primary method of acquiring Indian lands, since, under the new Constitution, only the federal government had the power to acquire Indian land. As Indian military power increasingly waned, however, attitudes toward Indian nations began to shift, and the market in preemption rights also contributed to this development.

This new perception eventually was incorporated into the law through a number of cases, most notably Fletcher v. Peck (1810), Johnson v. M'Intosh (1823), and the so-called Cherokee Nation Cases of 1831 and 1832. Lindsay G. Robertson, in Conquest by Law: How the Discovery of America Dispossessed Indigenous Peoples of Their Lands, has determined that

Chief Justice John Marshall devised the discovery doctrine in 1823 as a means of shoring up the claims of Virginia militia bounty warrant holders to lands in the southwestern corner of the State of Kentucky. The weapon he thus forged for his former colleagues in arms was seized by expansionist Georgians and wielded against Native Americans throughout the eastern United States. The reformulation of the doctrine he engineered in Worcester v. Georgia proved impossible to sustain. Johnson was too important to removal. In 1835, Jackson appointees took control of Marshall's court and revived the Johnson formulation. (p. 142)

The legacy of these decisions and the way they influenced the relationship between the United States and Native American nations endure to this day, and little remains of the times when Native Americans were parties to treaties with the United State and powerful military allies or opponents. The Delawares, the first tribe to sign a formal treaty with the United States of America, lost their federal recognition in 2005.