Treaty law is a lot like contract law. The principles are that there are two parties who are sitting down to negotiate an agreement. In this case in the case of treaties, it was two sovereign nations, the Nez Perce Tribe and the United States. In the course of those negotiations the principle thing to look at is what were the intentions of the parties, what did the parties reach agreement upon. In the Nez Perce Tribe’s 1855 treaty, one of the important components is that the Tribe reserved to itself a homeland, millions of acres in the initial treaty and as I stated that has been dwindled down to the current reservation of about 750,000 acres.

The other component is what sort of other rights did they reserve outside of that homeland. They reserved hunting and fishing and gathering and grazing rights within that treaty. Other components of the treaty were, because the Tribe gave up land, there was compensation. So the Tribe received money and promises of other types of services from the United States for giving up that land that was once their exclusive territory. Another thing that is important as a lawyer to consider in looking at these treaties is the tribes were at a disadvantage during these negotiation. They didn’t speak quite often the English language. When Governor Stevens and the other treaty negotiators in 1855 met with them, what Stevens said was often translated sometimes through a couple of translators into the Nez Perce language. The courts have said that what is controlling is what the tribes interpreted the treaty to understand. One good example of this is in the Shoshone Bannock Treaty. They reserved the right to hunt and the Idaho Supreme Court said that in the Shoshone language the word hunt also means fish so their hunting right has been interpreted to also include a fishing right.

So it is important when you are reading these treaties to consider what was the intention of the parties, more importantly what was the intention of the tribe when they agreed to what was contained in that treaty. I mentioned the hunting and fishing right. It is important to consider that the Nez Perce Tribe was a fishing culture. They depended upon salmon and steelhead and other fish for a number of purposes: religion, culture, trading with other tribes. They also depended on other resources on the land. The right to go to buffalo country to hunt buffalo, the right to hunt elk, the right to gather camas and other roots and berries, huckleberries as well as the right to gather firewood and of course to graze their horses because another important component of Nez Perce culture was the appaloosa horse. These are all things when you look at the Treaty of 1855 that you want to consider, what are the intentions of the parties and how would the Nez Perce Tribe have understood it.