ABSTRACT
The continued application of Native American codenames to United States (US) military operations and the practice of denoting enemy territory as “Indian Country” reveal the racialized edges of US foreign policy in the twenty-first century. The US federal government has maintained government-to-government relationships with sovereign Native American nations from the outbreak of the American Revolutionary War in 1775 through the present day. Diplomatic relations with Indigenous peoples occupied a space between foreign and domestic policy until Andrew Jackson’s Indian Removal policies forced the federal government to define its relationship with Native American nations within and beyond the republic’s borders. Lakota scholar Vine Deloria Jr. argued that the Continental Congress’ early and largely successful forays into Native American treaty-making represented a consequential yet overlooked stage in American national state formation. The Franco-American alliance of 1778 owed more to British mismanagement of Native American diplomacy rather than Franklin’s savvy as minister plenipotentiary to France.
