Identity, Sovereignty and Power: the Cherokee-Delaware Agreement of 1867, Past and Present

On 8 April 1867 the Native American tribes of the Cherokees and Delawares, under United States supervision, signed an agreement facilitating the removal of the Delawares to the Cherokee lands in Indian Territory (present-day Oklahoma). 1 The terms of this agreement came to be responsible for several legal disagreements between the two nations in the nineteenth century, as well as a drawn-out legal fight in the twentieth century in which the Delawares lost and then regained their federal recognition. 2 The treaty's long-lasting effects in this respect are not the sole reason the nature of the agreement merits our attention. Even in 1867 it was unusual because it departed from the more common way of arranging for the removal of American Indian tribes, which usually consisted solely of a treaty between the United States government and the Indian nation in question.