Partly-printed DS as president, one page, 8 x 10, June 7, 1869. President Grant directs the Secretary of State to “affix the Seal of the United States to the Proclamation of a Treaty of July 2, 1863, between the United States and the Eastern Bands of Shoshonee Indians.” Signed neatly at the conclusion by U. S. Grant. The document is affixed by its left edge inside a presentation folder that also contains a printed copy of the ‘Treaty with Eastern Shoshoni, 1863.” In fine condition, with light toning to the folds and edges.
The 1863 Fort Bridger Treaty with the Eastern Shoshone represented part of a process to clear a corridor for safe travel for whites emigrating to the West and for railway and communication routes. This treaty came on the heels of two important events: the Homestead Act of 1862 created a mechanism to encourage white settlement in the western territories of the United States; and, more importantly to the Shoshones, the Bear River Massacre in early 1863, which made it clear that the United States was prepared to go to great lengths to compel Shoshones west of Wyoming to comply with demands for passage. Nearly 400 Shoshones lost their lives at this encounter.
The treaty specified borders for a vast Eastern Shoshone homeland of around 44 million acres, which sprawled on both sides of the Continental Divide. A second treaty, signed in 1868, shrank this to a far smaller reservation — of around 3.2 million acres, with its heart in the Wind River Valley. Seventy more years of land cessions and court cases further reduced the reservation to its present size of around 2.3 million acres. It is now home to two tribes, the Eastern Shoshone and the Northern Arapaho, and since the 1930s has been called the Wind River Reservation. The Fort Bridger treaties arose from conflicts and compromises rooted in changing tribal economies, white emigration on the trails to Oregon, California, and Utah, a local gold-mining boom, general encroachment on Indian lands — and the approach of the transcontinental railroad.
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