LAND CESSIONS
November is American Indian Heritage Month
Between 1776 and 1887, the U.S. seized more than 1.5 billion acres from Native Americans by treaty and executive order.
There are currently approximately 6.79 million Native Americans, which is about 2.09% of the U.S. population. There are 574 federally recognized American Indian tribes in the U.S.
Sam Hilliard, a humanities professor at Louisiana State University, wrote an article “Indian Land Cessions” where he mentions California's history:
“Among the more calloused and unorthodox negotiations were those dealing with the California Indians around mid-century. Anticipating the Indian-White conflict that was sure to develop as a result of gold discovery, agents were dispatched from Washington to secure treaties with the California Indians and a number were concluded in which the Indian groups gave up their territorial claims in return for reservations. However, pressure in Congress by Whites who wanted no land granted to California Indians blocked ratification of the treaties. Since the Indians already had abandoned their homelands for the new, nonexistent reservations, they were left landless. The 1840-1859 map shows the land ceded by the treaties in 1851 and the reservations ceded during the following period. But there were never any reservations, the land was simply appropriated.”
Attempt to set things right
Larisa K. Miller, associate archivist for the Hoover Institution at Stanford University, published a paper in 2013, “The Secret Treaties with California's Indians,” regarding the unratified treaties in California. Miller's article details the attempt of lawyer Charles Edwin Kelsey who represented the Northern California Indian Association in the early 1900s. Kelsey worked with California Sen. Thomas Bard, a member of the Senate Committee on Indian Affairs on getting legislation to right the wrong.
Their efforts emphasized that failure to enact the treaties had been disastrous to the Indians of Northern California.
A bill was signed in 1905 by President Theodore Roosevelt where Kelsey was appointed to perform the survey of conditions. His report, delivered in the spring of 1906, led to an appropriation of $100,000 to purchase the first of what are now known as California's Indian rancherias; another $50,000 followed in 1908. The appropriations were meant to provide homes for the tribes in Northern California who were without lands as the result of the unratified treaties.