Treaty of Hopewell

Three agreements, each known as a Treaty of Hopewell, were signed between representatives of the Congress of the United States and the Cherokee, Choctaw, and Chickasaw peoples. They were negotiated and signed at the Hopewell plantation in South Carolina over 45 days during the winter of 1785–86.^[1]

The treaties were signed at the plantation owned by General Andrew Pickens, which the treaty texts refer to as "Hopewell on the Keowee". Anthropologist James Mooney records that "It was situated on the northern edge of the present Anderson county, on the east side of Keowee River, opposite and a short distance below the entrance of Little River, and about three miles from the present Pendleton. In the sight of it, on the opposite side of Keowee, was the old Cherokee town of Seneca, destroyed by the Americans in 1776."^[2]

The chief provision of the treaties was defining boundaries between sovereign tribal lands and lands open to settlement; other boilerplate provisions included exchange of prisoners, prohibition of settlement on tribal lands, rendition of criminals, punishment of crimes against Native Americans, restrictions on retaliation by either side, regulation of trade, and other minor provisions. The order and content of the sections in each Treaty were almost identical with the exception of an article in the Cherokee treaty providing for a Cherokee delegate to congress (reaffirmed in 1835 Treaty of New Echota), a provision that as of Sept. 2022 has yet to be fulfilled by the United States.

Despite affixing their signatures to the treaties, none of the Native American tribes recognized the sovereignty of the United States over their ancestral lands.