Linking Arms Together: American Indian Treaty Visions of Law and Peace, 1600-1800

In this readable yet sophisticated survey of treaty-making between Native and European Americans before 1800, Robert A. Williams, Jr. argues that Native Americans were active participants in the crafting of a shared legal culture. Legal historians have too often depicted Indians as merely acted upon by the white man's laws and institutions. In contrast, Williams looks at the numerous treaties Indians actively negotiated with whites and explores how they drew on their own unique traditions of diplomacy to resist and even influence the conduct of European law.Linking Arms Togetherrecovers a deeper understanding of how Indians tried to forge a new society with whites on the multicultural frontiers of North America-an understanding that may enlighten our own task of protecting Native American rights and imagining racial justice.

Robert A. Williams, Jr. is E. Thomas Sullivan Professor of Law and American Indian Studies at the University of Arizona