Linking Arms Together: American Indian Treaty Visions of Law and Peace, 1600-1800

In Linking Arms Together, Robert Williams shows us how the Indian tribes of eastern North America drew on their own unique traditions of treaty diplomacy in responding to the white man's views on the Indians' rights in the New World. The visions of law and peace between different peoples that emerged out of the Encounter era are represented in the hundreds of treaties and agreements Indians and whites negotiated with each other. Extraordinary documents in their own right, the treaty records of this intense and crisis-filled era reflect a variety of American Indian approaches to the problems of achieving law and peace between different peoples. Williams's examination of the treaty literature of the Encounter era helps us recall a long-neglected period of our national experience when Indians tried to create a new type of society with the white man on the multi-cultural frontiers of North America. Williams maintains that recovering a deeper understanding of this shared legal world of the North American Encounter era is crucial to the task of protecting Indian rights under U.S. law. Just as important, a better understanding of American Indian treaty visions of law and peace can also help us begin to imagine how U.S. law may achieve racial justice more generally.