WASHINGTON, DC.- The Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian, in partnership with the National Archives and Records Administration, is displaying the Treaty with the Western Cherokee, 1828, in “Nation to Nation: Treaties Between the United States and American Indian Nations.” The treaty was installed Oct. 1 and will be on view until April 2025. To commemorate the event, representatives from Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians, Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma and United Keetoowah Band of Cherokee Indians in Oklahoma joined Cynthia Chavez Lamar (San Felipe Pueblo, Hopi, Tewa and Diné), director of the National Museum of the American Indian, and William (Jay) Bosanko, deputy archivist of the United States, for the unveiling.

Beginning in the 1790s, small groups of Cherokees trying to avoid conflict with colonists migrated to present-day Arkansas from their homes in the Southeast. After the Louisiana Purchase in 1803, President Thomas Jefferson encouraged the Cherokee to continue their “voluntary” removal as part of his plan to resettle Native nations west of the Mississippi in order to open their lands in the east to white settlement. These Cherokees who first migrated west became collectively known as the Western Cherokee, or Old Settlers.

By 1828, the number of Cherokees in Arkansas had swelled to approximately 6,000. Submitting to colonists’ demands for more land, the Arkansas governor and the U.S. government pressured the Western Cherokee to negotiate a treaty that would remove them further west into what would become Indian Territory, or present-day Oklahoma. The Treaty of 1828 promised the Western Cherokee 7 million acres in exchange for their lands in Arkansas. This treaty was a crucial step in the creation of a western territory for eastern Native nations who would be forced from their ancestral lands only a few years later. Within a decade, thousands of Cherokees in the Southeast were forcibly removed to Indian Territory on the Trail of Tears.

Today, the three federally recognized Cherokee communities are the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma, the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians in North Carolina and the United Keetoowah Band of Cherokee Indians in Oklahoma.

Displaying original treaties in “Nation to Nation” is made possible by the National Archives and Records Administration, an exhibition partner. Several of the treaties required extensive conservation treatment by the National Archives’ conservator prior to loan. Treaties can only be displayed for a short amount of time in order to conserve them for the future. There are a total of more than 370 ratified Indian treaties in the National Archives, and more information about these treaties is on its website.

The next treaty to go on display at the National Museum of the American Indian will be determined by curators at the museum in collaboration with conservators and staff at the National Archives.