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In A Treaty is Made, Ronald Thomas West summarizes the dispossession and depletion of the Blackfeet people due to the elimination of the buffalo, which was US policy set forth by George Washington 100 years before the Blackfeet lands were taken. The backdrop of the entire establishment of territories and states can only be understood in reference to the fact that this was a declared war on the environment. As soon as the Revolutionary War was won, George Washington stated publicly and emphatically that the Indian lands must be depleted so that the Indians could be defeated. Between 1885 and 1895, a cartel of four white criminals and some Blackfeet traitors managed to sell off large tracts of Blackfeet territory using threats of starvation and military action as leverage. The author gives a brief summary of the suffering and loss, particularly with his reference to Ghost Ridge, a topographical feature so littered with bodies and caskets from starving Blackfeet that it earned this name.

Most of this chapter is devoted to a reconstruction of negotiations between the criminal Kipp gang and their favorite chief on one side and the loyal Blackfeet chiefs on the tribal side. To give an idea of the three perspectives, here’s a quote from the three different parties: Grinnell, lead white negotiator:

“…If you people would rather have the government sell the land for you…”

Three Suns, to the commissioners:

“We will approach each other with caution.”

This cautious attitude is demonstrated by the other Indian chiefs – Little Dog, Little Bear Chief, White Grass, Bull Shoe, and Little Plume, who represented the majority right wing tribal leaders of the Blackfeet. Contrast Three Sun’s attitude to that of White Calf, who was the pawn of the white criminals:

“We Indians, in my mind, are nothing but common dogs. The Great Father has taken it into his head to break in these wild dogs and has done so.”

This statement by the traitor chief, who was recognized as a supreme chief by the whites and who would have been executed for treason by the other chiefs if not for the protection of the U.S. military, seems to express an attitude concerning his people that is very similar to the current critical view held by American politicians concerning the American people.

The naming of Ghost Ridge is an example of the concept of a living world, its trails thought to carry the traces of Man's action, as apposed to the engineered world, designed to resist Man's imprint, its streets labeled with signs, often proclaiming the dreary sameness of every place: Pinewood, Washington, Martin Luther King, dotted with the same monotonous trading posts to be found in every town. In A Treaty is Made, Ronald Thomas West documents the process of cultural domestication in one of its more grotesque forms, a process that continues to transform our world, and from which men such Daniel Boone, Lewis Wetzel, Meshach Browning, Old Hatcher, Hugh Glass and The Liver-Eater had consciously removed themselves to its wildest and most remote margins.