Lenape, the 14th State? American Indian Treaties Reimagined

Free Hybrid Lecture

Location: Geological Lecture Hall, 24 Oxford Street, Cambridge, MA 02138

Speaker: Philip J. Deloria, Leverett Saltonstall Professor of History, Harvard University

During the American Revolution, representatives of the Continental Congress sought to forge alliances with Native nations through treaties, much as they did with European powers like France. This talk will examine the failure of these early diplomatic efforts, focusing on the treaties signed with the Maliseet in 1776 (Treaty of Watertown) and the Lenape in 1778 (Treaty of Fort Pitt). Philip Deloria will highlight notable provisions in these agreements—including their shift from Native diplomatic forms to legalistic ones—and consider how truly reciprocal and respected treaties with Native nations might have altered the very nature of the United States. The talk will invite an imaginative rethinking of the course of American history, a creative thought experiment that centers Indigenous land, diplomacy, and sovereignty.

This lecture is presented to mark the 250th Anniversary of the United States Declaration of Independence. 

Advance registration recommended for online and in-person attendance.

Free admission. Free event parking at the 52 Oxford Street Garage starting at 5:00 pm. Presented by the Peabody Museum of Archaeology & Ethnology and the Harvard Museums of Science & Culture. 

About The Speaker

Philip J. Deloria is the Leverett Saltonstall Professor of History at Harvard University where his research and teaching focus on the social, cultural, and political histories of the relations among American Indian peoples and the United States. He is the author of several books, including Playing Indian, Indians in Unexpected Places, and Becoming Mary Sully: Toward an American Indian Abstract, as well as two co-edited books and numerous articles and chapters. Deloria holds a PhD in American Studies from Yale University and has taught at the University of Colorado and the University of Michigan. He has been a long-serving trustee of the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of the American Indian, president of the American Studies Association, the Organization of American Historians, and the Society of American Historians, and is an elected member of the American Philosophical Society and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.