 Treaty of Fort Laramie (1868) |
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Signed between the U.S. and the Sioux Nation, this treaty granted the Black Hills to the Sioux people as part of their reservation. A few years later, General George Custer led an expedition through the Black Hills where they found gold. American violation of this treaty led to the Battle of Little Bighorn in 1876. Ownership of the Black Hills continues to be disputed today.
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| Treaty of Fort Stanwix (1768) |
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This treaty is the first formal treaty between the British and the Six Nations following the French and Indian War. Large amounts of Native American land were ceded to the British as a result of this treaty.
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| Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo (1848) |
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The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo reset the southern border between Mexico and the United States. Implications of the treaty included issues of citizenship, land, and legal status. Mexican nationals were admitted as U.S. citizens, legally defining them as white, but they could also be regarded as Indian on a case by case basis.
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| Treaty of Logstown (1752) |
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This treaty intended to secure alliance between the Six Nations and the English. The Treaty allowed the English use of land in East Ohio, with the intention both groups could live together. Taking place just before the French and Indian War, the Treaty of Logstown sedcured an alliance between the English and the Six Nations. The treaty included discussion of the unintended consequences of the earlier Treaty of Lancaster. The Treaty of Lancaster ceded the land of Virginia to the English.
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| Treaty of Paris (1783) |
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The Treaty of Paris was signed by the United States and Britain in 1783 to end the American War for Independence (1775- 1783). It recognized the United States as an independent state and delineated the Western boundaries of the new country.
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| Treaty of San Lorenzo (1795) |
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Also referred to as Pinckney's Treaty after the U.S. official who negotiated it, this treaty settled the borders between the United States and the Spanish colony of Florida as well as provided guidelines for future navigational disputes. Pinckney's Treaty was later referenced in the 1841 Amistad case when Spanish officials demanded the return of the Africans on board the ship as "property" seized by Americans on the high seas, per Article IX of the treaty.
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| Treaty of Tordesillas (1494) |
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The Treaty of Tordesillas determined the colonization of the Americas for Spain and Portugal. It renegotiated boundaries of empire in the Western Hemisphere between Spain and Portugal.
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| Treaty with the Choctaw and Chickasaw (1866) |
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The 1866 Treaty with the Choctaw and Chickasaw was one of a series of treaties between the United States government and each of the "Five Civilized Tribes" (the Cherokee, Chickasaw, Choctaw, Muscogee Creek, and Seminole Nations) at the end of the Civil War. The treaty details the stipulations for the Choctaw and Chickasaw Nations to re-establish their allegiance with the U.S. after allying with the Confederate States of America during the Civil War. Among other provisions, the Choctaw and Chickasaw Treaty of 1866 included articles that outlawed slavery within both nations (except as a punishment for crime), provided a pathway for citizenship and civil rights for the Freedmen of both nations, and ceded lands to the United States.
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| Treaty with the Navajo Nation (1868) |
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The 1868 Treaty with the Navajo allowed them to return to their ancestral lands during a period of history where the U.S. government were removing Native Americans from their homelands.
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| Trouble in Fairfax: The Quander Case (1879) |
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In February 1879, Felix Quander and his family were the victims of violence at the hands of county officials. In a letter to the Editor of the National Republican newspaper in D.C., Quander, or someone writing on his behalf, describes the attack upon his family. Related newspaper coverage of events follow.
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| Trump v. Hawaii (2018) |
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In this case, the Supreme Court ruled that the travel ban instituted by President Trump's Executive Order 13780 was within presidential power granted by Section 212(f) of the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965.
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| Trump v. United States (2024) |
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In this case, the Supreme Court ruled that a president "may not be prosecuted
for exercising his core constitutional powers" and is entitled to "a presumptive immunity from prosecution for all his official acts."
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| Tydings–McDuffie Act (1934) |
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This act established the process for the independence of the Philippine Islands, then a U.S. territory, after a ten-year transition period. The act reclassified Filipinos them from U.S. nationals to aliens and limited the number of immigrants from the Philippines to 50 per year.
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| U.S. Freedman's Bank Records, Registers of Signatures of Depositors, New York (1870) |
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Freedman's Bank records show both strivings toward stability as well as racialization and colorism post-emancipation due to the specific color-related information listed with deposits.
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| Under the Rule of Thumb: Battered Women and the Administration of Justice (1982) |
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This groundbreaking report reflected increased federal response to issues surrounding violence against women.
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| Undesirable Aliens Act (1929) |
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This act made unlawfully entering the U.S. a crime for the first time. Immigrants who did not cross the border through an official point of entry, where they had to pay a fee and submit to tests, could be charged with a misdemeanor crime, facing fines and up to a year's imprisonment. Returning to the U.S. after deportation was made a felony, punishable by $1,000 in fines and up to two years imprisonment. This law applied to all immigrants entering the U.S., but was intended to restrict immigration from Mexico.
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| Unis et al. v. Charlton's Administrator et al. (1855) |
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In this freedom suit, the descendants of a Black woman named Flora claimed their freedom on the grounds that Flora was free before being abducted and sold into slavery in Virginia. Between 1826-1855, a series of cases bounced around county and appellate courts in Virginia before finally being decided against freedom for Flora's descendants.
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| United Nations Universal Declaration of Rights (1948) |
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This document, drafted by a committee of the United Nations chaired by Eleanor Roosevelt, details the "basic rights and fundamental freedoms" due all peoples regardless of "race, colour, sex, language, religion, political or other opinion, national or social origin, property, birth or other status."
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| United States v. Brignoni-Ponce (1975) |
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In this case, the Supreme Court ruled that it was a violation of the Fourth Amendment for law enforcement to stop a vehicle solely on the basis of the driver appearing to be of Mexican descent. Appearance of ethnicity did not constitute reasonable suspicion for the stopping and interrogation of a vehicle and its passengers.
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| United States v. Cartozian (1925) |
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In this case, the District Court of Oregon debated whether an Armenian immigrant was white enough to be naturalized. Just two years after the Supreme Court ruled that Ozawa, a Japanese man, and Thind, a South Asian man, were not white enough for naturalization, the Oregon court ruled that people from Asia Minor were close enough to European descent to be naturalized.
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| United States v. Cisna (1835) |
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In this case, a white defendant was charged with horse stealing on Wyandot tribal lands in Ohio. The court ruled that the state was within its rights to punish its citizens for crimes committed against Native Americans on tribal lands.
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| United States v. Joseph (1876) |
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In this case, the Supreme Court ruled that the Pueblo people were not Indians within the meaning of the Indian Nonintercourse Act in part because they had received full legal title to their land from the Spanish.
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| United States v. Kagama (1886) |
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This Supreme Court case asserted the federal government's role in criminal jurisdiction on tribal lands. The Court ruled that the Indian Major Crimes act was constitutional, therefore federal courts had jurisdiction to indict Native defendants for murder.
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| United States v. Rogers (1846) |
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In this case, the Supreme Court ruled that a white man who claimed citizenship of the Cherokee Nation through domicile and marriage was not an "Indian" within the meaning of the law.
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| United States v. Sandoval (1913) |
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In this case, the Supreme Court ruled that the Pueblo people were Indians, repudiating the earlier United States v. Joseph decision which had held that they were not. The title to Pueblo lands was now seen as held by tribes instead of in fee simple, meaning that Congressional approval was needed in order to make land sales. This undermined the legitimacy of non-Indian land titles across New Mexico.
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