Montana Tribes

EU - 4 Land and Treaties

Reservations are land that have been reserved by the tribes for their own use through treaties and was not ‘given’ to them. The principle that land should be acquired from the Indians only through their consent with treaties involved three assumptions:

That both parties to treaties were sovereign powers.
That Indian tribes had some form of transferable title to the land.
That acquisition of Indian lands was solely a government matter not to be left to individual colonists.