Partly-printed DS as president, one page, 8 x 10, October 14, 1868. President Johnson authorizes and directs the "Secretary of State to affix the Seal of the United States to “the Proclamation of a Treaty between the United States and the Senecas, mixed Senecas and Shawnees, and other tribes of Indians, concluded February 23, 1867.” Signed neatly at the conclusion by Andrew Johnson. In fine condition, with light toning along the folds. Accompanied by a printed copy of the treaty and by an engraving of Johnson, which bears a facsimile signature.
With the onset of the Civil War, and despite the pro-Confederate stance of their leaders, most Seneca and Shawnee spent the Civil War years as refugees in Kansas among their old friends and allies, the Ottawa and Wyandotte Nations. At the close of the Civil War, the people returned to their own lands in Indian Territory to find their homes and farms in shambles and growing wild. In 1867 the U.S. government negotiated a treaty with the Seneca-Shawnee that resulted in the tribes selling portions of their land upon which the Peoria, Ottawa, Wyandotte, Kaskaskia, Wea, and Piankashaw Indians were settled. The treaty also divided the Shawnee and Seneca into separate tribes and named the former ‘the Eastern Shawnee.’
President Andrew Johnson's policies and actions toward Native Americans were complex and varied during his presidency. He inherited Andrew Jackson’s Indian Removal policy aimed at relocating Native American tribes from their ancestral lands to reservations further west, and, as this document reveals, his administration negotiated treaties with Native American tribes with the goal of securing land for white settlers. To further complicate matters, Johnson's presidency coincided with the early years of Reconstruction. While Johnson was sympathetic to the plight of Southern states, he faced conflicts with tribes allied with the Confederacy, a group that included the Seneca and the Shawnee.
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