Fort Smith Council

The Fort Smith Council was a series of meetings held at Fort Smith, Arkansas from September 8–21, 1865, that were organized by the United States government for all Indian tribes east of the Rockies. The purpose was to discuss the future treaties and land allocations following the close of the American Civil War.

Attendance was mandatory for all the tribes that had signed treaties with the Confederacy—Creek, Choctaw, Chickasaw, Seminole, Cherokee, Shawnee, Delaware, Wichita, Comanche, Great Osage, Seneca, and Quapaw. The purpose was to notifiy them that, by taking up war against the United States, they had abrogated all their previous treaties and forfeited all their lands and annuities, and to discuss terms of the new treaties.

It was also to notify those tribes living in Indian Territory that some of their previous lands were to be turned over to the tribes who were being relocated from their reservations in Kansas.

ee also

* Fort Bridger Treaty Council of 1868

References

*Perry, Dan W. [http://digital.library.okstate.edu/chronicles/v014/v014p022.html "A Foreordained Commonwealth"] , "Chronicles of Oklahoma" 14:1 (March 1936) 22-48 (retrieved August 17, 2006)