Indian Peace Commission
The Indian Peace Commission (also the Sherman,[1]: 755 Taylor,[2]: 110 or Great Peace Commission[3]: 47 ) was a group formed by an act of Congress on July 20, 1867 "to establish peace with certain hostile Indian tribes."[4] It was composed of four civilians and three, later four, military leaders. Throughout 1867 and 1868, they negotiated with a number of tribes, including the Comanche, Kiowa, Arapaho, Kiowa-Apache, Cheyenne, Lakota, Navajo, Snake, Sioux, and Bannock. The treaties that resulted were designed to move the tribes to reservations, to "civilize" and assimilate these native peoples, and transition their societies from a nomadic to an agricultural existence.
As language and cultural barriers affected the negotiations, it remains doubtful whether the tribes were fully informed of the provisions they agreed to. The Commission approached the tribes as a representative democracy, while the tribes made decisions via consensus: Indian chiefs functioned as mediators and councilors, without the authority to compel obedience from others. The Commission acted as a representative of the United States Congress, but while Congress had authorized and funded the talks themselves, it did not fund any of the stipulations that the commissioners were empowered to negotiate. Once treaties were agreed to, the government was slow to act on some, and rejected others. Even for those treaties that were ratified, promised benefits were often delayed, or not provided at all. Congress was not compelled to support actions taken in its name, and eventually stopped the practice of treaty making with tribes in 1871.
The Indian Peace Commission was generally seen as a failure, and violence had reignited even before it was disbanded in October 1868. Two official reports were submitted to the federal government, ultimately recommending that the U.S. cease recognizing tribes as sovereign nations, refrain from making treaties with them, employ military force against those who refused to relocate to reservations, and move the Bureau of Indian Affairs from the Department of the Interior to the Department of War. The system of treaties eventually deteriorated to the point of collapse, and a decade of war followed the commission's work. It was the last major commission of its kind.
During the 1860s, national preoccupation with the ongoing American Civil War and the withdrawal of troops to fight it, had weakened the US government's control of the west. This, in addition to corruption throughout the Bureau of Indian Affairs, and the continued migration of the railroad and white settlers westward, led to a general restlessness and eventually armed conflict.[5]: Ch. 1 [6] Following the Sand Creek Massacre on November 29, 1864, where troops under John Chivington killed and mutilated more than a hundred friendly Cheyenne and Arapaho, half or more women and children, hostilities intensified. Congress dispatched an investigation into the conditions of Native American peoples under Senator James R. Doolittle. After two years of inquiry, Doolittle's 500-page report condemned the actions of Chivington and blamed tribal hostilities on the "aggressions of lawless white men".[7][8]: 35–6 [9][5]: Ch. 1
On December 21, 1866, yet another conflict, the Fetterman Fight, saw the killing of an entire unit commanded by William J. Fetterman at the hands of Lakota, Sioux and Arapaho warriors as part of Red Cloud's War. William T. Sherman personally wrote to the Secretary of War and assured him that "if fifty Indians are allowed to remain between the Arkansas and Platte" they would "checkmate three thousand soldiers" and that action had to be taken. For Sherman, it made "little difference whether they be coaxed out by Indian commissioners or killed."[8]: 36
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