As Long as the Grass Grows: 250 Years of Broken Treaties with Native Nations
Between 1778 and 1871 the United States ratified roughly 370 treaties with Native nations — and broke essentially all of them. Most Americans were never told it happened. As Long as the Grass Grows is a 15-part ReThink History series that walks that record treaty by treaty: the first broken promise at Fort Pitt in 1778, the founders' word to the Haudenosaunee, Andrew Jackson's doctrine and the Trail of Tears, the legal machine that made treaty-breaking lawful, the seizure of the sacred Black Hills, and the fights still alive today at Standing Rock and inside the Supreme Court. It asks the hard questions head-on — why the country broke them, what argument defends the breaking, what the tribes said when the promises fell, who really 'used smallpox' and how much of that story is true, which administrations shared Jackson's view, and which would face charges for crimes against humanity if that law had existed in their time. Measured and steelmanned on every side, it is told by a narrator who saw the aftermath firsthand, from a boyhood visit to the St. Croix Chippewa's Sand Lake community in Wisconsin — a nation left out of the treaties entirely — to a life lived across Indian country from Wisconsin to Alaska. Narrated by AI voices from sourced, human-reviewed research. © 2026 Selway Solutions LLC · <a href="https://history.selwaysolutions.io/index.html#license">Educational & Institutional Use License</a> · <a href="mailto:nick@selwaysolutions.io">Contact</a>
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Episodes
The Broken Treaties That Are Still Winning in Court
The treaties are not dead law.
The "Lost Tribe" the Treaties Forgot Entirely
Every other episode is about a broken promise.
Was It Genocide? Putting the American Record on Trial
If the laws had existed then, which administrations would face charges? This episode runs the record against the actual legal instruments — Nuremberg, the 1948 Genocide Convention, the Rome Statute — and steelmans the defense before weighing the case.
What Native Leaders Said When the Treaties Were Broken
When the promises fell, the tribes answered — in words we mostly know only through the very people who broke them.
Smallpox Blankets: What Actually Happened
Who 'used smallpox' against Native Americans? The honest answer is narrower than the legend — and the truth is more damning.
The Presidents Who Inherited Andrew Jackson's Playbook
Andrew Jackson's belief — that Native nations must assimilate, remove, or vanish — outlived him by more than a century, carried by presidents of both parties.
Why the Sioux Refuse Over a Billion Dollars
The 1868 Fort Laramie Treaty guaranteed the Black Hills to the Sioux for their 'absolute and undisturbed use,' and required three-quarters of the nation to approve any sale.
How Bureaucracy and Gold Broke the Great Plains Treaties
On the Plains the pattern was almost mechanical: promise territory and rations, then cut the annuities, fail to stop the gold-seekers, and send the Army when starving people left to hunt.
How the Supreme Court Made Breaking Native Treaties Legal
If the United States broke almost every treaty it signed, how was any of it legal? This episode traces the machine: the Doctrine of Discovery imported into American law in Johnson v.
The Fraudulent Treaty Behind the Trail of Tears
The Treaty of New Echota was signed by a handful of Cherokee men who had no authority to sign anything.
How Andrew Jackson Turned Conquest Into Federal Policy
Even his own Creek allies weren't spared.
The "Permanent" Native Border That Lasted Barely a Decade
The 1795 Treaty of Greenville drew a line across Ohio meant to separate Native land from American settlement forever.
How the Founders Broke Their Word to the Iroquois
The 1794 Treaty of Canandaigua, signed for George Washington with the Haudenosaunee, is still marked by an annual treaty-cloth payment today.
The First Treaty the United States Ever Broke
The first treaty the United States ever signed with a Native nation — the 1778 Treaty of Fort Pitt with the Lenape — offered something astonishing: the possibility of a Native-led 14th state.
How the U.S. Broke Nearly 370 Treaties With Native Nations
Between 1778 and 1871 the United States ratified roughly 370 treaties with Native nations — and broke essentially all of them.