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Treaty

Delaware Tribe of Indians at Leavenworth City, Kansas (1861)

A July 1861 Delaware agreement secured the railroad company's bonds with 100,000 acres of Delaware land for the 1860 purchase.

Signed
July 2, 1861
Senate
Ratified
The land in this treaty’s record. Open on the map

What happened

On July 2, 1861, at Leavenworth City, the United States and the Delaware tribe reached an agreement about the surplus lands covered by the May 1860 treaty. The Leavenworth, Pawnee and Western Railroad Company had agreed to buy those lands. The company's agent, Thomas Ewing Jr., executed twenty-nine bonds totaling $286,742.15 for the appraised value, payable in ten years with six percent interest.

The text says the company pledged and mortgaged 100,000 acres of Delaware land to the United States to secure those bonds. If the company failed to build the railroad sections it had promised, the 1860 treaty made it forfeit the unpatented lands, which the United States could take and sell for the Delawares' benefit.

This instrument shows how the 1860 land sale to a private railroad was financed and secured. The pledged land totaled 156 1/4 sections, or 100,000 acres. The OSU treaty database lists ratification on August 6, 1861, and proclamation on October 4, 1861.

Summarized with AI assistance from 2 sources and checked against their words; not yet reviewed by historians or by the nations. Report an error

What the sources say, and how this was checked

Well supported by the sources below.

  1. 156 1/4 sections, or 100,000 acresTribal Treaties Database (Oklahoma State University): Treaty with the Delawares, 1861
  2. a mortgage of the company on the one hundred thousand acres of Delaware Indian landsTribal Treaties Database (Oklahoma State University): Treaty with the Delawares, 1861

Research notes. This account is based on the treaty text alone and covers its recitals and bond terms; it does not describe what became of the railroad. The treaty says 100,000 acres of Delaware land were pledged to secure the bonds.

What the treaty did to the land

Each shape is a numbered area in the federal government’s 1899 record of land cessions.

What happened next

Everything the record holds about this land and this treaty, in order: what earlier agreements said, what this one did, and what the United States, the courts and the nations did afterwards.

  1. 1854

    Land kept

    About 333,000 acres recognized as land of the Delaware

    By Delaware at Washington, DC (1854)

    area 425

  2. 1860

    Land lost

    About 333,000 acres ceded to the United States by the Delaware

    By Delaware at Sarcoxieville, Delaware Reservation, Kansas Territory (1860)

    area 425

  3. 1861

    This treaty

    Earlier terms confirmed for the land of the Delaware

    A July 1861 Delaware agreement secured the railroad company's bonds with 100,000 acres of Delaware land for the 1860 purchase.

Who is doing the work today

The nations connected to this treaty come first, then groups returning land and defending treaty rights. Support goes directly to them.

Native legal and land defense, nationally

Gifts go straight to each organization; this atlas takes nothing. Listing is not endorsement: how organizations are listed.

Sources

  1. treaties.okstate.edu/treaties/treaty-with-the-delawares-1861-0814reference work
    Treaty with the Delawares, 1861 July 2, 1861. | 12 Stats. 1177.

Shapes are approximate and are not legal descriptions of land, title or jurisdiction.