Reconstruction Treaties

On the eve of the American Civil War in 1861, a significant number of Indigenous peoples of the Americas had been relocated from the Southeastern United States to Indian Territory, west of the Mississippi. The inhabitants of the eastern part of the Indian Territory, the Five Civilized Tribes, were suzerain nations with established tribal governments, well established cultures, and legal systems that allowed for slavery. Before European Contact these tribes were generally matriarchial societies, with agriculture being the primary economic pursuit. The bulk of the tribes lived in towns (some covering hundreds of acres and containing thousands of people) with planned streets, residential and public areas. The people were ruled by complex hereditary chiefdoms of varying size and complexity with high levels of military organization.

By the middle of the 19th century, the United States Government had started leasing land from the Five Civilized Tribes (ex. Choctaw and Chickasaw) in the western, more arid, part of Indian Territory. These leased lands were used to resettle several Plains Indian tribes that tended to be nomadic in nature, embracing the Horse culture. At the extreme, the Comanche society was based on patrilinear and patrilocal extended family sharing a common language; they did not developed the political idea of forming a nation or tribe until their relocation to Indian Territory.

At the beginning of the Civil War, the Union Army was withdrawn from Indian Territory exposing the Five Civilized Tribes to aggression from the Plains Indians. The Confederacy filled the vacuum. All of the Five Civilized Tribes as well as other surrounding tribes signed treaties with the Confederacy. As a part of reconstruction, the Southern Treaty Commission was created by Congress to write new treaties with the Tribes that sided with the Confederacy.

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