Broken Treaties of United States

---

  SITN historical records reference multiple treaties and legal instruments relevant to Indigenous peoples of the Southeast and adjoining regions. These are preserved for historical and educational purposes, including:

Treaty of Dancing Rabbit Creek (1830)

Choctaw Scrip Act (August 23, 1842 – 5 Stat. 513)

Chickasaw Treaty of Pontotoc (1832)

Creek / Muscogee treaty agreements (18th–19th centuries)

Seminole treaties, including records associated with Black Seminole communities

Indian trust and private land claim statutes (19th century)

Colonial-era treaties in Virginia and Carolina regions

These instruments are presented within the SITN archives as part of the historical framework affecting Indigenous families and land tenure. 

The Indian Removal Act of 1830, signed by President Andrew Jackson, authorized the forced relocation of Eastern Native American tribes to lands west of the Mississippi, opening up millions of acres for white settlement, but involved coercive treaties, bribes, and sometimes violated existing laws, leading to the tragic "Trail of Tears" for the Cherokee and similar removals for other nations like the Choctaw, Creek, and Chickasaw, with the government often using dubious agreements, backdated patents, and exploiting internal tribal divisions to seize land and consolidate power. 

Key Aspects of the Indian Removal Act & Treaties:

The Act (1830): Legally permitted the President to negotiate treaties with tribes for their land east of the Mississippi in exchange for territory in the West, promising financial aid and protection.

Coercion & Deception: While ostensibly voluntary, the Act was used to pressure, bribe, and threaten tribes, often ignoring resistance and signing treaties with unauthorized factions, notes an article from the U.S. Department of State history site.

Land Grabs: The primary goal was to acquire fertile Native American lands for white settlers, fueling westward expansion and the growth of slavery.

The Trail of Tears: The forced removal of the Cherokee Nation (1838-1839) epitomized this policy, resulting in thousands of deaths from disease, starvation, and exposure during the brutal journey to Oklahoma.

Broader Impact: Other nations, including the Choctaw, Creek, Chickasaw, and Seminole, also suffered forced removals, collectively known as the "Trails of Tears," affecting over 88,000 people. 

Regarding Land Patents & European Claims:

While the provided search snippets focus on the act of removal and treaty-making, the assertion about Europeans backdating land patents and using tribal names is consistent with historical patterns of land theft and fraud during this era, where settlers often exploited loopholes and fraudulent practices to claim Native lands, notes a USF Digital Commons article on Indian Removal and a BIA.gov overview of Indian Law. 

In essence, the Indian Removal Act of 1830 formalized a policy of dispossession, using treaties as a tool for forced migration, with deep injustice and land theft embedded in its implementation, leading to immense suffering and loss for Native American peoples, notes the National Archives. 

Indian treaties and the removal act of 1830

Indian Removal Act (1830)

Signed into law by President Andrew Jackson, this act authorized the president to negotiate with Native American tribes for their removal from ancestral lands in the eastern United States to territory west of the Mississippi River, primarily present-day Oklahoma. The stated goal was to free up land for white settlement and the expansion of slavery, particularly the cotton economy in the South. The act led to the forced relocation of approximately 60,000 members of the Cherokee, Muscogee (Creek), Seminole, Chickasaw, and Choctaw nations, often at great human cost.

Trail of Tears

This term refers to the harrowing forced marches the Cherokee and other tribes (the "Five Civilized Tribes") endured during their removal, primarily between 1830 and 1850. The journeys were marked by exposure, disease, starvation, and violence, resulting in the deaths of thousands—an estimated 4,000 of the 16,000 Cherokees who were removed perished. The event is widely considered an ethnic cleansing or genocide. 

Jim Crow

Eugenics

Eugenics was a pseudoscience popular in the U.S. and Europe during the early 20th century that advocated for the "improvement" of the human gene pool through selective breeding. Proponents believed that traits like poverty, criminality, and disabilities were hereditary and could be bred out of the population. 

This movement led to harmful policies, including: 

Forced sterilization of over 60,000 individuals deemed "unfit" (including minorities and people with disabilities) in more than 30 states.

Restrictive immigration laws targeting non-Nordic groups.

"Fitter families" contests at state fairs.

Nazi Germany adopted many eugenics concepts from the U.S., ultimately escalating them to the atrocities of the Holocaust. 

Walter Plecker and "Paper Genocide" 

Racial Reclassification: Plecker mandated that every person in Virginia be classified as either "white" or "colored" (Black), effectively removing the "Indian" category from all official birth, marriage, and death records.

Erasing Records: He pressured local clerks to alter existing records and sent out circulars with lists of surnames he believed were "mixed" to ensure individuals could not register as Indian or white, classifying them all as "colored".

Impact on Federal Recognition and Land: This systematic destruction and alteration of documentation created immense hurdles for Virginia tribes attempting to prove their continuous existence and lineage, which is required for federal recognition and the protection of treaty and land rights. 

"Negros are Creeks and Creeks are negros" and Land Patents

The phrase "Negros are Creeks and Creeks are negros" is likely referencing historical arguments and records, some of which may be in the Library of Congress (as source material), that were used to challenge or define the identity of the Freedmen (descendants of formerly enslaved people associated with the Five Tribes) within Creek and other Native nations. This relates to complex, post-Civil War issues of citizenship and land rights within the tribal nations in Indian Territory (Oklahoma). 

The related point that clerks and registry representatives "wasn't allowed to put Indian on the land patents" directly connects to Walter Plecker's policies in Virginia, where his manipulation of vital records aimed to sever Native people's legal connection to their identity and, implicitly, their land claims, to benefit white expansion. This administrative action was a significant tool in the broader historical effort to acquire Native land and enforce a rigid, discriminatory racial hierarchy. 

Indian treaties and the removal act of 1830

They also back dated land patents and Europeans listed themselves under indigenous tribes sir names to steal land under false sales and military warrants.. 

 Terminology for Fraudulent Activities

$5 Indians: This is a well-known derogatory term used to describe white people who allegedly bribed government officials (for as little as $5) to be fraudulently listed on the Dawes Rolls and other tribal censuses to receive land allotments and other benefits intended for Native Americans.

Land Fraud: The general term for the various illegal and unethical methods used to acquire Native American land, which included altering land patents, backdating records, and using coercive tactics like military warrants. The Dawes Act of 1887 and related policies facilitated this land loss by making "surplus" tribal lands available to non-Native settlers.

Paper Genocide: This term describes the systematic manipulation of records (census records, birth documents, tribal rolls) to erase Indigenous identities and claims to land and sovereignty, effectively "terminating" their legal existence on paper.

Allotment and Assimilation Era: 

This historical period (roughly 1887-1934) was the federal policy context during which much of this specific type of fraud occurred. The goal was to break up communal tribal lands into individual parcels, a policy that led to significant land loss and fraud.
Reclassification of Races and Walter Plecker

The historical evidence SITN mention regarding the reclassification of individuals with Siberian, Asian, Chinese or European backgrounds as "Native American" relates to a separate, but connected, instance of racial reclassification, primarily associated with Walter Plecker in the early-to-mid 20th century.

Walter Plecker was a white supremacist who served as the first registrar of Virginia's Bureau of Vital Statistics. He enforced the Racial Integrity Act of 1924 and systematically altered birth, death, and marriage certificates to reclassify mixed-race individuals, especially those of Aboriginal, African and Native American descent, as solely "Black" or "colored". 

This was done to maintain strict racial segregation and the "purity" of the white race, effectively erasing Indigenous and mixed-race identities in official records. This is a clear example of paper genocide. 

UNDRIP: The World Rewrites the record

In 2007 the UNITED NATIONS finally put it in writing. Indigenous people have the right to the Lands, Territories and Resources that they have Traditionally Owned. 

Article 26. That's the echo of every BROKEN TREATY

From the Washitaw waters to the Yamassee coast.

The same COPPER color BLOODLINE 

The Census Records tried to Erase now speaks in global law. 

The ancestors didn't vanish, they been waiting for the paperwork to catch up.