The Permanent Indian Frontier and the First Fort Laramie Treaty
From Removal to a ‘Permanent’ Line
By the 1830s the United States had a settled answer to what it called ‘the Indian question’: removal. The 1830 Indian Removal Act, signed by President Andrew Jackson, gave the federal government the power to relocate Indigenous nations west of the Mississippi River. The most notorious case was the Trail of Tears in 1838–39, when the Cherokee were marched west under military escort and thousands died of exposure, hunger and disease. The Choctaw, Creek, Chickasaw and Seminole were removed in the same way at other dates.
Out of removal grew the idea of the Permanent Indian Frontier. This was a line drawn on maps from the 1830s, dividing the United States proper from a vast ‘Indian country’ west of the Mississippi where, according to federal policy, Indigenous peoples could live free of settler intrusion. A chain of military forts — Fort Leavenworth, Fort Gibson, Fort Smith — was meant to police the line. The Edexcel specification names this policy explicitly: it is the starting point for understanding US-Indigenous tension.
The Permanent Indian Frontier was a line west of the Mississippi, set out in the 1830s under the Indian Removal Act of 1830. Federal policy promised it would separate settlers from Indigenous peoples in perpetuity — a promise that lasted barely two decades.
Why the ‘Permanent’ Frontier Failed
By 1851 the line was dead in everything but name. Three pressures had broken it. The first was migration: from 1836 the Oregon Trail carried thousands of emigrants directly across it each summer. The second was the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo of 1848, which ended the Mexican-American War and handed the United States California, New Mexico and the South-West — vast new territories on the far side of the ‘permanent’ line. The third was gold: the 1849 Rush brought 300,000 people to California in five years, about half of them straight across the Plains.
The map made no sense any longer. ‘Indian country’ sat between two halves of the United States, and the federal government wanted safe overland passage between them. Settlers also clashed with Plains nations along the trails — over wood, water, grazing for animals and the disease that wagon trains brought with them. Indigenous nations, for their part, watched the buffalo herds being disturbed by the trail traffic. Both sides increasingly demanded that Washington do something. The era of separation was finished; what would replace it was Concentration.
The 1851 Indian Appropriations Act
In February 1851 Congress passed the Indian Appropriations Act. The Act funded the creation of reservations on the Plains — specific areas of land set aside for individual Indigenous nations, on which they were expected to live and not freely leave. This was the legal beginning of the reservation system. The Act also funded annual annuities — payments of money and goods promised in return for territorial concessions.
Behind the law was a new doctrine that historians now call concentration policy. Where the Permanent Indian Frontier had tried to keep settlers and Indigenous peoples apart on either side of a line, concentration would put each Indigenous nation on its own patch of land while opening the spaces in between to settlers and railroads. It was, in effect, the end of the idea that Indigenous nations could keep the entire western interior to themselves — and the beginning of the framework that would dominate US-Indigenous relations until the Dawes Act of 1887.
The First Fort Laramie Treaty, 1851
In September 1851, around 10,000 representatives of the Lakota Sioux, Cheyenne, Arapaho, Crow, Shoshone, Assiniboine, Mandan, Hidatsa and Arikara gathered at Fort Laramie in modern-day Wyoming. It was one of the largest inter-tribal councils ever held with the United States, organised by the US Indian agent Thomas Fitzpatrick. On the Indigenous side, signatories included Conquering Bear, the Brulé Lakota leader.
The terms were clear on paper: Indigenous nations recognised the right of safe passage on the Oregon Trail and accepted defined territories on the Plains; in return, the US promised annual annuities of $50,000 for fifty years and recognised those territories. The Treaty did not transfer land to settlers — in 1851 it was still about regulating co-existence. Yet within months Congress reduced the annuity term to ten years, and even those payments arrived late or short, often spoiled when they did arrive. The Treaty was signed but never ratified by Congress in the agreed form. Trust between the Plains nations and the US Government, already thin, was thinner by 1854.
No. Confusing the two is one of the easiest ways to lose marks on this topic. From this lesson on, every reference to Fort Laramie should carry its date. 1851 is the multi-nation council, annuities and recognition of safe passage on the Oregon Trail. 1868 — covered later in this unit — is the second treaty, which ended Red Cloud’s War, closed the Bozeman Trail and granted the Black Hills to the Lakota. Same fort; very different treaties; very different outcomes. Lock the date to the terms whenever you write about either.
A Shift in Policy and a Loss of Trust
Looking back, the events of 1851 mark a turning point. Federal policy moved from separation (the Permanent Indian Frontier) to concentration (specific reservations and annuity diplomacy). Indigenous nations gained, on paper, formal US recognition of defined territories. But because Congress reneged on the annuity terms, the Treaty was experienced by Plains leaders as another broken promise. Every later confrontation in this unit — from Little Crow’s War in 1862 to Red Cloud’s War in 1866–68 — sat on top of this initial loss of trust.
The 1851 Fort Laramie Treaty promised safe passage on the Oregon Trail in return for $50,000 in annuities for fifty years. Congress quickly cut the term to ten years, and payments were late or short — undermining trust in every later negotiation.