Native Americans’ campaigns to restore their treaty rights began in the late 19th century but expanded greatly after World War II. Between 1778 and 1868, the U. S. Congress ratified 373 treaties with Native American nations, reserving specific territory for those nations or guaranteeing specific rights of land use sold to white Americans. When Congress stopped negotiating treaties in 1871, it stipulated that nothing would “invalidate or impair the obligation of any treaty” already ratified. But the U. S. government reneged on its promises by taking new land from Native Americans, and American courts refused to uphold Native Americans’ treaty right of access to traditional hunting and fishing grounds and culturally sacred sites.
The Indian Claims Commission (ICC), established in 1946, gave Native Americans a forum to seek justice for fraudulent land cessions. But treaty violations continued because new pressures for land developed after the war, and federal officials attempted the “termination” of reservations in the early 1950s. Native American veterans of World War II and of the Korean War, many of them associated with the National Congress of American Indians, protested that during the COLD WAR the United States should honor its domestic treaties to protect its international image as the defender of minority rights and guarantor of treaties, the glue of peaceful international relations.
The federal government’s violation of the 1794 Pickering Treaty removed New York Seneca from their ancestral homelands in the early 1960s, inspiring Native Americans across the country to fight for their treaty rights. National Indian Youth Council members mirrored Aerican Americans’ civil rights strategies by staging “fish-ins” to bring the nation’s and the world’s attention to treaty violations in America.
The treaty rights movement later found expression in other dramatic events. In 1972 activists staged a protest march along what they called the “Trail of Broken Treaties” to pressure the U. S. government to uphold its commitments. This march helped to inspire Oglala Sioux to occupy Wounded Knee, South Dakota. Supported by the American Indian Movement (AIM), Oglala leaders contended that the U. S. government had violated the 1868 Ft. Laramie Treaty. In 1980 the U. S. Supreme Court awarded the Sioux $122 million for the federal government’s illegal seizure of the Black Hills in 1877. Although the Sioux rejected the money, demanding the return of the Black Hills instead, the case represented a treaty rights victory.
Perhaps the most important victory came in 1974 when U. S. District Court Judge George Boldt upheld the right of Native Americans in Washington and Oregon to fish in areas guaranteed by 19th-century treaties. Boldt captured Native Americans’ views in arguing that “the mere passage of time has not eroded, and cannot erode, the rights guaranteed by solemn treaties that both sides pledged on their honor to uphold.”
The so-called Boldt decision provided a legal precedent and inspiration for Native Americans facing similar battles by reenergizing Native culture and creating a fishing industry, which prompted many Native Americans to return to their reservations. For Native Americans, the treaty rights struggle sharpened cultural identities, engendered new economic opportunities, and strengthened political sovereignty. But they remained vigilant in the 21st century to fight against new violations of what they considered sacred contracts with the U. S. government.
Further reading: Vine Deloria, Jr., Behind the Trail of Broken Treaties: An Indian Declaration of Independence (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1985); Francis Paul Pru-cha, American Indian Treaties: The History of a Political Anomaly (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997).
—Paul C. Rosier
Truman, Harry S. (1884-1972) U. S. vice president, 33rd U. S. president
Harry Truman was a Missouri politician who succeeded Franklin D. Roosevelt as president in 1945 and presided over the start of the cold war.
Truman was born in Lamar, a small farming village in Missouri, on May 8, 1884, but he later settled in Independence, Missouri, in 1890, where he completed high school. Truman then worked for several years as a farmer, until entering the U. S. Army in 1917. He was appointed an officer in the 129th Field Artillery regiment, and he was shipped to Europe to fight in World War I. He returned from Europe in 1919. After Truman’s haberdashery business failed in 1922, he turned to politics. With the endorsement of the local Democratic Party, Truman was elected an administrative judge on the Jackson County Court.
In 1934, Truman was elected to the U. S. Senate. Reelected to a second term in 1940, he persuaded the Senate to establish a special committee with him as chair to investigate waste in defense contracts. The committee proved to be successful and gained Truman considerable national exposure.
In 1944, Roosevelt accepted the recommendation of party leaders who suggested Truman for the vice presidency. Three months into his fourth term, Roosevelt died, and Truman became president of the United States.
With World War II raging, Truman stepped in as the new commander in chief. As testing on the atomic bomb took place, Truman attended the Big Three Conference in Potsdam, where the Soviet Union, Great Britain, and the United States discussed the terms of Germany’s surrender in World War II. Once the war in Europe was over, the United States and its allies were eager to end the war against Japan. On August 6, 1945, the first of two atomic bombs was dropped on Hiroshima, Japan; the second fell on August 9, 1945, on Nagasaki. The United States thus became the first and only country to use a nuclear bomb on another country. Though Truman received criticism in later years for his use of the bomb, he defended his decision on the grounds that it saved American lives.
Truman’s second major decision involved the shift he initiated in U. S. foreign policy. Ignoring the advice of George Washington to stay out of world affairs, he believed that it was necessary to stand up to the Soviet Union in what were the fledgling years of the cold war. To that end, the Truman Doctrine promised U. S. support to countries threatened by communism. The Marshall Plan soon followed, giving economic aid to struggling Western European nations. The establishment of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) assured military assistance to the 12 signatory countries on the grounds that an attack against one would be considered an attack on all.
Truman’s presidency was not without crisis. Between June and September 1948, Soviet forces established a land blockade of western sectors of Berlin, Germany, which were occupied by the British, French and Americans. A massive airlift became necessary in order to supply the three zones. On May 15, 1948, the state of Israel was established, and Truman immediately recognized the new nation, even though Arab armies converged on Israel almost immediately. The United States, however, remained neutral during the first of these Arab-Israeli wars. On June 15, 1950, North Korean troops invaded South Korea. The United States, with the backing of the United Nations (UN), sent immediate military aid to South Korea. Because war was never declared on North Korea, Truman considered the conflict a “police action.”
At home, Truman worked on three major issues: administration of the modern American presidency, a legislative program known as the Fair Deal, and issues of communism within the government. Truman expanded the executive office of the president, as new advisers were needed on matters of national defense and foreign policy. The National Security Act of 1947 and its amendments helped the president create the National Security Council, the Department of Defense, and the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). He also brought the growing federal bureaucracy under control by improving White House organization, placing more control in the hands of cabinet members and their departments, and entrusting them to do the bidding of the administration. The Fair Deal included both economic and social legislation, and it produced one significant triumph: it brought the issue of civil rights to the forefront of public issues. Even though none of his proposals regarding civil rights were enacted, Truman raised the issue before the public. In 1947, Truman established the Federal Employee Loyalty Program for the sole purpose of eliminating suspected communists from government positions. This was a result
Harry S. Truman and Winston Churchill, 1952 (Library of Congress)
Of the pressures from Republicans that the president had made little effort to remove communists from government departments.
Early in 1952, Truman announced that he would not run for another term, though he could have done so had he wished. Truman left the office at the age of 68 with very low public regard. He lived for another 23 years after his presidency, advising all succeeding presidents until his death on December 26, 1972.
Prior to his death, Truman dedicated much of his postpresidential career to the construction of his library, which was the first to be founded under the provisions of the Presidential Library Act of 1955. Established in Truman’s hometown of Independence, Missouri, the library and museum was dedicated on July 27, 1957, and was the first presidential library to include a replica of the Oval Office. The Truman library is also noted for “Independence and the Opening of the West,” the Thomas Hart Benton mural that marks the entrance to the Oval Office replica with its bold depiction of the fulfillment of the nation’s Manifest Destiny.
Truman was survived by his wife Bess and daughter Margaret, who was married to New York Times reporter and later editor Clifton Daniel. A best-selling mystery author, Margaret Truman also wrote several notable biographies and books on the White House. Bess Truman died of congestive heart failure on October 18, 1982, at the age of 97, one of the longest-lived First Ladies in American history.
Further reading: Alonzo L. Hamby, Man of the People: A Life of Harry S. Truman (New York: Oxford University
Press, 1995); Donald R. McCoy, The Presidency of Harry S. Truman (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1984); David McCullough, Truman (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1992).
—Robert A. Deahl
World History
