Counting the number of wars between the start of the American Revolution in 1775 and the closing of the frontier in 1890 is as difficult as counting the number of treaties. Does the use of troops to round up Indian people and remove them from their lands, which occurred during the 1830s in the Southeast, constitute a war? Was it "war" when gold miners, popularly known as the "Forty-niners," continually slaughtered California Indians? In 1894 the U.S. government provided an official (and conservative) estimate of the wars between 1789, when the U.S. Constitution took effect, and 1890, the year declared as the close of the frontier: "The Indian wars under the government of the United States have been more than 40 in number. They have cost the lives of about 19 thousand white men, women, and children, including those killed in individual combats, and the lives of about 30 thousand Indians. " (African Americans, Mexican Americans, and Asian Americans also were killed on the frontier, including those who served in the military, but these facts are conspicuously absent in the government report.) Regarding the 30 thousand Indian deaths, the government also noted: "The actual number of killed and wounded Indians must be very much greater than the number given, as they conceal, where possible, their actual loss in battle, and carry their killed and wounded off and secrete them. The number given above [30 thousand] is of those [Indian bodies] found by the whites. Fifty percent additional would be a safe estimate to add to the numbers given."

The United States's estimate that a total of about 45 thousand Indians and 19 thousand whites died creates a ratio in excess of two Indians killed to every one "white." This ratio is all the more dramatic given the fact that the total Indian populations were far, far smaller than that of the United States. In 1860, for example, the total U.S. population was more than 31 million, while that same year the total population of all Indian nations south of Canada and north of Mexico was only about 339,421. In 1890 the total U.S. population was almost 63 million and the Indian population only 248,253.

Most wars with Indian nations occurred while the United States was at peace with the rest of the world, but wars with Indian nations also occurred simultaneously with the War of 1812, the Mexican War, and the Civil War. During the latter war (1861�1865), the United States carried out major wars of conquest against American Indian nations ranging over half the continent, exemplified by wars in Minnesota against the Dakota, in Oklahoma against Confederate-allied Indians such as the Cherokee, in Colorado against the Cheyenne, and in Arizona against the Navajo. In all the wars, and on both sides, religion was a major factor. While the United States justified its wars as an expansion of its civilization and its primary religions, Indian nations were fighting to defend their civilizations and religions. Because the citizens and leaders of the United States recognized the connection between Indian resistance and the inspirations of Indian religions, Indian religions were often regarded by the people of the United States with fear. For example, the Indian religion broadly known as the Ghost Dance inspired Indian people and at the same time wrought fear throughout the frontier of the United States, creating conditions in South Dakota during 1890 that led to the slaughter of Lakota men, women, and children at Wounded Knee.

"Indian Wars" can raise complex philosophical and historical issues that are relevant to all aspects of American studies. In every war, the United States recruited Indian allies or scouts, a reminder of how rivalries among Indian nations existed both before and after 1492, and how Indian nations fought each other just as the French fought the Germans during the same eras. Another major issue is why wars began. The United States often justified its wars with Indian nations by declaring that U.S. armies were only protecting the safety of innocent settlers. Yet more often than not the United States initiated the land policies, such as land grants to Revolutionary War soldiers and the Homestead Act of 1862, that placed white, black, and Asian civilian men, women, and children on the forefront of the frontier expansion and on lands that were clearly parts of Indian homelands.

More subtle issues are raised by the historic use of Indian images and analogies. Why, for example, does the name of an Indian people in Virginia, Appomattox, evoke only the "Lost Cause" of the Confederacy and not the lost continent of America's First Nations? Or consider Walt Whitman's vision of "our race, The loftiest of life upheld by death," in his poem "From Far Dakota's Ca�ons" that glorifies George Armstrong Custer as a martyr at the Little Big Horn, which stands in contrast to the observations of Chief Joseph of the Nez Perc�. In 1877 Chief Joseph and his people had refused to move from their homelands in northeastern Oregon, and in the war that followed they had been defeated. The injustice of the war and the plight of those Nez Perc� who followed Chief Joseph were later recognized by the American public. Based on a speech and subsequent interview with Chief Joseph, an article in the April 1879 North American Review relates Joseph's Indian viewpoint of the frontier. "We were but few, while the white men were many, and � we could not hold our own with them. We were like deer. They were like grizzly bears. We had a small country. Their country was large. We were contented to let things remain as the Great Spirit Chief made them. They were not; and would change the rivers and mountains if they did not suit them." Ironically, since 1898 "Indian wars" and "U.S. wars" have become synonymous, as Indians have fought bravely in the Spanish-American War, World War I, World War II, Korea, Vietnam, the Persian Gulf War, and all other military actions undertaken by the United States.

A Century of Dishonor (1881) is the bold title of Helen Hunt Jackson's history of the wars and treaties between the United States and Indian nations. (Jackson's novel Ramona appeared in 1884.) Challenging the American public, Jackson wrote: "Colorado is as greedy and unjust in 1880 as was Georgia in 1830, and Ohio in 1795; and the United States government breaks promises now as deftly as then, and with an added ingenuity from long practice." Jackson also noted: "The testimony of some of the highest military officers of the United States is on record to the effect that, in our Indian wars, almost without exception, the first aggressions have been made by the white man." European Americans often justified these wars by emphasizing a God-given Manifest Destiny in the advancement of "civilization" (white) and "religion" (Christianity). But no one was more honest than Captain John Smith. In his 1624 General History of Virginia, he discussed a war with the local Powhatan Indians that had begun in 1622. Smith noted: "What growing state was there ever in the world which had not the like? Rome grew by oppression." With the Enlightenment's Roman example in mind, in 1792 the new United States formed the Legion of the United States, America's first large professional "regular" army formed after the American Revolution. (Between the end of the Revolution and 1792, there were relatively few "regulars," and state militias provided most of America's military strength.) The legion was not raised to defend America from European invasion but for the express purpose of conquering Indian nations defending their homelands along and north of the Ohio River in what are now parts of Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois. And from President George Washington's point of view, the legion was necessary because Indian warriors had just won what would remain in history as the greatest Indian victory and worst defeat for the United States. On November 4, 1791, in what is now western Ohio, an alliance of Great Lakes Indian nations under Little Turtle (Miami) and Blue Jacket (Shawnee) defeated General Arthur St. Clair's army, killing at least 631 of 1,400 soldiers in what became known as "St. Clair's Defeat." These losses are far greater than what became the most famous Indian victory: that of the Lakota (Sioux) and Cheyenne over troops under Custer at the Little Bighorn on June 25, 1876, with a loss of 225 soldiers. Despite occasional victories, however, American Indian nations were eventually overwhelmed.

Five centuries after Columbus, an American Indian point of view was eloquently expressed by Cherokee artist Kay WalkingStick. Referring to the wars, treaties, enslavements, and epidemics that had overwhelmed the Indian population north of Mexico, WalkingStick wrote: "In 1492 we were 20 million. Now we are 2 million. Where are the children? Where are the generations? Never born." While bitterness and anger are understandable among surviving American Indians throughout the Western Hemisphere, a profoundly basic philosophical principle balancing that bitterness and anger was articulated by Leon Shenandoah, an Onondaga Iroquois chief. Chief Shenandoah, referring to all non-Indian inhabitants of the Americas, remarked in 1979: "For some reason, the Creator has allowed you to stay. I don't know why. And I don't think you know why. But I do know that we will have to work it out together."

The word treaty has a specific legal definition in the United States: a formal agreement between nations ratified by the U.S. Senate. But the history of treaty-making on both sides of the Atlantic is actually the history of diplomacy, because a treaty, broadly, is any formal agreement between nations. Before 1492 competing Indian nations throughout the Western Hemisphere conducted both war and formal diplomacy that led to agreements or treaties among themselves.

After 1492 First Nations brought their own well-developed forms of diplomacy and world views into their negotiations with European Americans. During the colonial period many First Nations, such as the Creek and the Cherokee in the South, were able to fight wars and negotiate treaties from positions of relative strength, factors enhanced by the European American colonists' need for Indian allies in their own colonial wars with rival colonial powers. After the American Revolution, however, wars and treaties increasingly became one-sided. The United States was able to dictate terms in direct proportion to its ever-increasing population and economic power. Thus while treaties in the 1790s still reflected at least some semblance of the balances of power evident in the colonial period, after 1830 treaty terms were decidedly weighted in favor of the United States, especially with regard to how much the United States could intrude in the affairs of Indian nations. Although individual treaties are open to a range of legal interpretations, the difference between earlier and later treaties is demonstrated by the 1794 Treaty of Canandaigua made between the Six Nations Iroquois Confederacy and the United States, and the 1868 Treaty of Fort Laramie made between the Lakota and the Arapaho and the United States. The 1794 Treaty of Canandaigua states a clear assertion of the signatories' sovereignties. However, by 1868 in the Treaty of Fort Laramie, U.S. control is evident: "The President may, at any time, order a survey of the reservation" and "the United States may pass such laws on the subject of alienation and descent of property as between Indians and their descendants as may be thought proper. "

No matter what the era, however, wars and treaties were not necessarily related as "cause and effect." Not every treaty negotiated in Indian America ended a war, and many wars ended without a treaty. In addition, treaties often only dealt with matters of trade, passage of non-Indians through Indian territories, and land transactions. At least 395 treaties between America's First Nations and the United States were made between 1775 and 1871. The United States officially stopped making "treaties" in 1871, although treaties existing before that date were and are still regarded as valid. Even after 1871, "agreements" and other diplomatic relations have continued to be made between American Indian First Nations and the United States. Furthermore, there are also hundreds of treaties negotiated by individual states, by various American citizens, and even by representatives of railroads. There are treaties relevant to Indian America that were negotiated between the United States and a foreign nation without representatives of Indian nations present but that nevertheless transferred to the United States claims to vast amounts of Indian lands. Examples include the Treaty of Paris of 1783, which ended the Revolution (with Great Britain, regarding Indian lands east of the Mississippi and south of the Great Lakes); the Louisiana Purchase in 1803 (with France, regarding Indian lands west of the Mississippi); the Convention of 1818 (with Great Britain, regarding Indian lands in North Dakota, South Dakota, and Minnesota); the Adams-Onis Treaty in 1819 (with Spain, regarding Indian lands in Florida); the Oregon Settlement of 1846 (with Great Britain, regarding Indian lands in the Northwest); and the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo in 1848 (with Mexico, regarding Indian lands in the Southwest and California); the Gadsden Purchase of 1853 (with Mexico, regarding Indian lands in the Southwest); and the Alaska Purchase of 1867 (with Russia, regarding Native lands in Alaska).

As the United States continually expanded, it inherited the treaties that had already been made in each newly acquired territory. Thus the United States's legal system had to consider Indian nations within the claimed boundaries of the United States, such as the Pueblo of the Southwest or the Tlingit of Alaska, who had made initial treaties with other foreign powers such as Spain, Mexico, Russia, Great Britain, or France. During the Civil War the Confederate states also made treaties with Indian nations, and these also have had a role in defining Indian legal rights today. Finally, two other treaties between Great Britain and the United States remain important to Indian nations today, even though they were made without any Indian representatives present: the 1794 Jay Treaty (or Jay's Treaty) that among many issues dealt with Indian trade and border-crossing rights between the United States and Canada; and the 1814�1815 Treaty of Ghent, which ended the War of 1812 and reaffirmed all Indian rights that existed prior to 1811, no matter which side any particular Indian nation took during the war. There are also treaties made during the colonial period that still affect Indian country (for example, the 1713 Treaty of Utrecht between Great Britain and France and the 1768 Treaty of Fort Stanwix between the Six Nations Iroquois Confederacy and Great Britain). Whatever the era of a treaty, however, the same legal question is currently being asked regarding all treaties: Which of these treaties were "legal" and which were fraudulent?

Finally, what are implied by the terms Indian wars and Indian treaties, terms that have been in the English language for centuries? When Indian people defend their homelands against invading troops, why is it an "Indian war" instead of a "U.S. war"? If Indian wars involve far more complex questions than the term would suggest, what does the term Indian treaty imply? Did only Indians make treaties? Today, Indian people frequently remind non-Indians that each treaty was negotiated by a U.S. government representing "we the people." Thus while Indians certainly "have treaties," non-Indians share the obligations of those same treaties. And lastly, given the history of these wars and treaties, how accurate and appropriate are terms in American studies such as post-colonial American literature? The descendants of the invaders and the governments that represent them will not be withdrawing from any part of the Western Hemisphere. Not one American Indian nation from anywhere in the Western Hemisphere has full membership in the United Nations, where the delegates continue to debate wars and treaties.