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.Andonce again the remaining members of the tribe were left in the dark aboutthese additional perks for their chiefs.28 The two documents of 1860 and1861 essentially catered to a railroad company, the Leavenworth, Pawneeand Western Railroad.By signing the treaties, the Delawares agreed to havetheir lands allotted in severalty, 80 acres for each man, woman, or child.And still some of the Delawares seem to have insisted on keeping landsset aside for those Lenape not at the time living with the main body of thetribe.The wish to be reunited with them persisted in spite of the unsettledsituation all around them.29The remaining unallocated lands were considered surplus by the UnitedStates government and were to be sold off to the Leavenworth, Pawnee and 46 Indigenous Peoples in the United States and Mexico, 1620 2000Western Railroad, which later consolidated with the Union Pacific.The rail-road needed these large amounts of land not merely for the tracks but also tocut timber for construction purposes.The surplus lands to them were mainlya real estate investment because the tracks themselves were not actually laidover railroad land but instead over the remaining Delaware plots, in accor-dance with the right-of-way provisions from the treaties.The railroad boughtthe land to the low appraisal price and then sold it on for significantly moremoney.Even the sale of lands to the railroad was in itself somewhat out ofthe ordinary in treaty practice.As Weslager has pointed out, by the termsof the old treaties, the Delawares were permitted to sell their lands only tothe government, but the treaties of 1860 and 1861 permitted sale to the rail-roads as well. 30 Given that by law only the United States government couldextinguish Native land titles, this was, though maybe not strictly illegal, atleast very unusual.It could be argued that this practice was not illegal asit was still the United States that extinguished Delaware land title thoughonly to pass it on to the railroad right away, within the very same treaty.Even given that the treaties were very favorable to the railroad com-pany, and that the company therefore should have made a huge profit fromthese transactions, it still did not manage to meet the scheduled paymentsto the tribe on time.Yet instead of interceding on the Delawares behalf, thegovernment decided to make concessions even though President Lincolnwas not quite satisfied with the plan. 31 When the railroad claimed to beunable to meet its payment obligations, the government in the person of theSecretary of the Interior and the president himself looked at the situationand decided to be lenient with the company.32 It was then allowed to issuebonds and mortgages on the lands of the 1860 treaty to raise the moniesdue.In spite of not meeting its treaty obligations, the railroad company waspermitted to walk away with the profit, leaving the Indians high and dry.During the treaty negotiations the Lenape had been given the impressionthat the construction of a railroad would enhance their land s value.Thiswas indeed the case.But it was not the Delaware tribe who came to benefitfrom this increase.On the contrary, they came to suffer from a number ofrailroad-related damages, like stock killed.Furthermore, the bonds issuedaccording to the treaty of 1861 did not even cover any improvements theLenape had made to the land.33 Once again they only stood to lose fromsigning treaties with the United States government, who did not seem tocare about the fate of the tribe.Looking at the speed their reservation was reduced through United Statesintervention it is very surprising to find 170 male Lenape volunteering in 1862to fight for the Union in the Civil War.This fact is especially outstanding sinceat the time the entire tribe numbered only 1,085 individuals, and of these just Loss of Independence Day 47201 were men between the ages of eighteen and forty-five.34 Hence the quotaof actively fighting Unionists among the Lenape came up to almost 85% ofthose who could be expected to join.It is extremely doubtful that any otherethnic group sent such a high percentage of its men to fight for the Unioncause.Seemingly recognizing this, United States officials explicitly referred tothe Delawares as friendly. 35 Historian Laurence Hauptman sees this voluntaryenlistment as a survival strategy, trying to incur favor with the Great Fatherin Washington.36 Some prominent Delawares were even given commissionsand authorized to raise their own companies of Indian volunteers.One has to esteem this Civil War participation of the tribe even higherwhen taking into consideration the situation at home.The Delaware war-riors left their homes and families unprotected and in a potentially verydangerous situation, having to fend for and defend themselves.They had toweather attacks from both white and Indian secessionists as early as 1862.The situation was aggravated even more by the refugees from Indian Ter-ritory, among them Cherokees, some of whom the Delawares fed and sup-plied with necessary equipment.37 The precariousness of matters in Kansasand Lenape warrior awareness of this becomes apparent from a letter writ-ten by Captain Fall Leaf and addressed to Commissioner of Indian AffairsDole in September of 1863.In it Fall Leaf explicitly asks for the Delawaremen to be sent home to protect our own women and children and ourown property. 38 So their voluntary enlistment clearly was not an easy sac-rifice to make.Still the United States did not repay the favor the Delawarevolunteers had done them.39 On the contrary, on July 4, 1866, on Indepen-dence Day, one last treaty deprived the Lenape of what remained of theirKansas lands and sent them to live in what used to be the southern part ofthe old Indian Territory, among the Cherokees.40THE LEGAL SIDE OF REMOVALAt the end of the war, the United States government resumed its efforts toarrange for a permanent removal of the Delawares from Kansas, more orless imposing a treaty which deprived the Lenape of what still remained oftheir Kansas lands and urging them to move to the Cherokee Country.41This treaty, eventually signed on July 4 1866, provided for a number ofthings, like the sale of land to the railroad.It also outlined the procedurefor the voluntary dissolution of tribal ties and the adoption of United Statescitizenship for individual Delawares seeking to remain in Kansas.42 In Arti-cle 4 of this document, the United States agreed to sell the Delawares a tractof land to be selected by the Delawares in one body in as compact a formas practicable. This was to be chosen from the lands already ceded by the 48 Indigenous Peoples in the United States and Mexico, 1620 2000Choctaws, Chickasaws, Creeks, Seminoles, or a tract still to be ceded bythe Cherokees.(The latter were the last of the Five Civilized Tribes to signone of the so-called reconstruction treaties with the United States.)However, as previously established, the Delawares had already hadsecond thoughts about moving to Cherokee lands; or rather, their originalreservations had never been overcome, as the numerous applications fordelegations or funding in the intervening years clearly indicated
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Tematy
IndexMark A. Noll, Luke E. Harlow Religion and American Politics, From the Colonial Period to the Present (2007)
Jesse Fox Mayshark Post pop cinema; The search for meaning in new America (2007)(1)
R. Murray Thomas Manitou and God, North American Indian Religions and Christian Culture (2007
Heather Cox Richardson West from Appomattox, The Reconstruction of America after the Civil War (2007)
Michael Thomas American Policy toward Israel, The Power and Limits of Beliefs (2007)
Aida D. Donald Lion in the White House, A Life of Theodore Roosevelt (2007)
Warren C. Robinson Jeb Stuart and the Confederate Defeat at Gettysburg (2007)
Zygmunt Miłoszewski Teodor Szacki 01 Uwikłanie [2007]
Louis Kontos and Dav
Christa Faust Choke Hold [HCC 104] (epub)