Shattering the American Myth. Sharing the real story of westward expansion and the taking of Indian land.
Over the course of a century, Native Nations ceded most of their land to the U.S. government through treaties, government-to-government agreements that were supposed to guarantee continual use and occupation of treaty land by Indian people. But promises were broken. Land was stolen. Fortunes were made.
In school we learned about the brave pioneers who headed west with big dreams, laying the groundwork for a great nation. This American Myth is a lie. The settlement game was rigged from the get-go as the East Coast money men carved up the country for their personal benefit. It was the land speculators, railroad barons, European fur traders, and mining and lumber interests who drove the treaty process, securing hundreds of millions of acres of land and natural resources for themselves, their families and their business partners.
The Treaty Signers Project tells the real story behind westward expansion, how the profiteers acquired everything of value including the original sites for hundreds of cities and towns, and resold it to the pioneers for obscene profits. By combining vast amounts of historic data and with a powerful graphic search tool, the Treaty Signers Project will change how you think about American history.
This website offers a variety of ways to learn about the U.S. treaty process with separate pages about the treaties and the signers and a wealth of related information. To see a visual representation of the process, use the dashboard which is designed to help you narrow your search to locate the information that is most important to you. Details on how to use the dashboard most efficiently can be found on the Database page.
The dashboard offers an interactive view of the Treaty Signers database which is a compilation of the Treaties signed between the U.S. and Indigenous nations with information about the people who signed them and why. This tool makes it easy to visualize the impact of treaty signing at the national and global level and filter the database by treaty, individual signers, land cession numbers, states and data range. Click the ‘Get Started’ button to begin exploring.
