Transportation

 

​​​I​​​n many treaties the US negotiated the right to build transportation routes and to navigate rivers that passed through Indigenous nations. Among the signers of these treaties were men who then built and owned the resulting transportation systems.

In the aftermath of treaties, US signers recieved contracts to blaze trails and build roads and turnpikes that traversed well-established Indigenous trade routes. And as the movement of minerals and timber increased, traders and speculators such as J. P. Arndt, Hercules Dousman, Henry Sibley, and the Chouteau family diversified their interests into steamboats.

With burgeoning westward migration, two great transportation ventures were begun and operated by treaty signers. Wagon train routes were established, supplied and protected by men who helped shape US-Indian relations. And the greatest transportation scheme of the treaty-making era, the railroad, was directed by a who's-who of treaty signers. The right to build railroads was negotiated by men who owned that means of transportaion, from local railways to the transcontinental railroad.

​Trade and Immigration Routes
Aggressive US expansion in the west involved the incision of roads through Indigenous nations. Wagon routes carried emigrants to California gold fields and settlements in the Pacific Northwest. In the Southwest, the US developed new trade routes to capture markets in places such as Santa Fe. US treaty signers forged these routes, supplied the travelers for profit, and ran the "Southwest trade." 

The consequent resistence of Indigenous nations to this invasive activity resulted in increased military presence west of the Mississippi. Treaties that sought to protect white immigration, control Indigenous nations, and broker the ends to various conflicts were often negotiated by US military officers. Traders, fort sutlers, and territorial officials were often also on hand to witness the treaties.