SOCIAL SCIENCES

Pen and Ink Witchcraft: Treaties and Treaty Making in American Indian History

by Colin G. Calloway
Oxford Univ. 2013. 368p. illus. notes. bibliog. index. ISBN 9780199917303. $34.95. HIST
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Traditionally, treaties have been portrayed as effective vehicles for dispossessing unwitting American Indians of their homelands. While that may have been true early in the colonial period, Calloway (history, Dartmouth Coll.; One Vast Winter Count: The Native American West Before Lewis and Clark) effectively argues that many savvy native treaty negotiators were in fact using treaties—both those negotiated with European states during the colonial period and those negotiated later with the United States—to pursue tribal political agendas. Though he relies on many examples, Calloway focuses on the treaties of Fort Stanwix (1768), New Echota (1835), and the two negotiated at Medicine Creek (1867). Rather than pulling isolated quotes from those four treaties to prove his thesis, he reprints them in their entirety in the appendix to provide full context.
VERDICT This highly recommended monograph joins Francis Paul Prucha's The Great Father: The United States Government and the American Indians as required reading for anyone interested in the history of treaty negotiations by American Indians. Readers should also consider Calloway's The Scratch of a Pen: 1763 and the Transformation of North America, which discusses the impact of the 1763 Treaty of Paris, ending the Seven Years' War.
Reviewed by John R. Burch, Campbellsville Univ. Lib., KY , Jun 01, 2013
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