The Treaty on the Severn River

Baltimore is Native American land — that’s the first thing I want you to know. Many locals and outsiders alike would consider that a strange perspective, since Baltimore is usually perceived in a monochrome scale of Black and white, but its story has always been more complicated. In fact, much of Baltimore City may not legally belong to its settlers, depending on your interpretation of a 1652 treaty’s ambiguous boundaries.

Contrary to a historic marker proclaiming it “virgin” timberland, the land now known as Baltimore was used productively by Indigenous people long before the colonizers came here. This area was lightly settled by small groups of Piscataway people, and the forests were managed by the Susquehannock people (who refer to themselves as the Conestoga-Susquehannock Tribe today) through regular prescribed burns that cleared out vegetation and facilitated hunting. Colonists wrote descriptions of this “Baltimore Barrens” ecosystem, often unaware that it was due to Indigenous terraforming and not an innate feature of the landscape.¹

A rare public commemoration of this history in Baltimore City. Photo by the author.

Treaties, in contrast, can provide explicit documentation of Indigenous imprints on North American landscapes. In 1652, Susquehannock leaders (Sawahegeh, Aurotaurogh, Scarhuhadih, Ruthcuhogah, and Wathetdianeh, as their Iroquoian-language names were transliterated into English) negotiated and signed “Articles of Peace and freindshipp” with Maryland colonial leaders. The Susquehannock diplomats were seeking European alliances as a bulwark against Haudenosaunee attacks from the north. (The Susquehannocks were also negotiating with New Netherland and New Sweden around the same time.) Maryland, meanwhile, was desperate for an end to warfare with the Susquehannocks. Richard Bennett, who was both the governor of Virginia and the interim governor of Maryland, led their delegation. He was joined by a number of other Protestants who had recently taken over the Catholic colony’s government and may also have wanted to consolidate their authority within the colony through external alliances.²

The 1652 Maryland–Susquehannock treaty was likely modeled on the 1646 Anglo–Powhatan Treaty, and it was only the second treaty ever between an Anglo-colonial government and an Indigenous nation; it set precedents for many future treaties. However, it differed from those other agreements in a notable way: this was a treaty of equal relations, a true nation-to-nation negotiation. It did not put the Susquehannock people under any colonial authority. Its text conveys the distinct impression that the Marylanders were terrified of them. Even so, this was a treaty of land cession as well as a peace treaty. The Susquehannock representatives ceded a large stretch of land on Maryland’s western shore (west of the Chesapeake Bay) and eastern shore (east of the Chesapeake, on the Delmarva Peninsula) in exchange for alliance and continual peace between the two signatory parties. 

The wording of this land cession is ambiguous. The cession’s northern and southern boundaries on each side of the Chesapeake are clear, but not its eastern and western boundaries. A 1666 renewal of the Maryland–Susquehannock peace agreement did not clarify the boundaries. Instead, it revealed the colonists’ deep entanglements in regional Indigenous politics. The ambiguity of the land cession may have been helpful to either or both parties. One hypothesis is that its inland boundary on the western shore (as understood by the Susquehannock signatories) was the Fall Line, a geologic boundary where the upland piedmont meets the coastal plain. This fall line cuts through present-day Baltimore City, which poses the question of whether the Susquehannock people maintained their claims to (and burning practices in) city land west of the fall line after 1652.³

There was more to the treaty than land cession, though. One paragraph forbade surprise attacks by either signatory party upon the other. Another paragraph stated that “upon any occasion of buisness to the English, or any Messadge and the like,” the Susquehannock people must come in a delegation fewer than “Eight or ten” in number, and must “bring with them the token given them by the English for that purpose, by which they may be knowen.”

In 1675, the prohibition on surprise attacks was decisively violated. The Susquehannock people, who had relocated to a fortified settlement on the Potomac River, were wrongly blamed for some recent violence. In retaliation, a joint force of 1,000 colonial Maryland and Virginia troops attacked the Susquehannock fort without warning. A few Susquehannock leaders came out to negotiate, bringing with them a copy of the 1652 Maryland–Susquehannock Treaty and a medal with black and yellow ribbons (Lord Baltimore’s colors), which they said was the token of peace given to them by the governors of Maryland. Colonial militia leaders ignored the careful symbolism of these actions, took the Susquehannock negotiators captive, and killed them all with blows to the head.⁴

Colonial troops then laid siege to the fort. The Susquehannock people who survived the siege escaped and fled Maryland. When Baltimore Town began to be settled in the 1730s, the Susquehannock people were not in a position to contest the boundaries of the 1652 land cession, even if that treaty had remained intact.

Since then, Anglo-colonial leaders and U.S. officials have made — and broken — hundreds of treaties with Native American tribal nations. In the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, Native nations have fought back against broken treaties through protest and in United States federal courts, and sometimes won. Most often, as in the 1960s and 1970s Puget Sound “Fish-Ins,” and Menominee Tribe of Indians v. United States (1968), these victories have hinged on restoring historic treaty rights (like hunting and fishing in traditional lands and waters) to current tribal citizens. In 2020, however, the US Supreme Court ruled on an issue of treaty land in McGirt v. Oklahoma, and decided that the reservation land allotted to the Muscogee (Creek) Nation in nineteenth-century treaties was still their reservation today. According to this modern federal jurisprudence, the terms of old and broken treaties are still in force. Perhaps even the one signed on the Severn River in 1652.⁵

The Maryland–Susquehannock Treaty, courtesy of the Maryland State Archives.

Baltimore is my adopted hometown. I grew up in Seattle, Washington, on land ceded by the Duwamish Tribe to the United States in the 1855 Treaty of Point Elliott. Like the Maryland–Susquehannock Treaty, this treaty was also broken by settlers shortly after its signing, and the clause promising a reservation for the Duwamish people was never kept. Today, the Duwamish Tribe continues to advocate for their tribal sovereignty and treaty rights. Beginning in 2017, Seattleites have participated in the “Real Rent Duwamish” campaign, literally paying rent to the Indigenous people whose traditional lands they occupy.⁶

This history was in the back of my mind when I was asked to help research an Indigenous land acknowledgment in Baltimore. It was difficult to find much relevant information online or in my university library, but I thought surely there must have been a treaty that pertained to Baltimore. Other members of our Land Acknowledgment Working Group, mostly Native American or First Nations tribal citizens from across North America, had similar expectations. As outsiders to Maryland, we were used to land acknowledgments elsewhere mentioning a treaty (or the lack thereof, as “unceded land”). Finding the 1652 treaty opened up a whole other set of fascinating questions that still occupy me today.⁷

Baltimore is still Native American land. Artist, historian, and Lumbee community member Dr. Ashley Minner-Jones has extensively documented and mapped Baltimore’s “Reservation,” which was once home to a substantial twentieth-century Lumbee community. The Conestoga-Susquehannock Tribe is still around today, and their people tell their story in their own words. Although largely displaced from Baltimore City by a mix of gentrification, “urban renewal,” and other factors, the local urban Native population maintains a strong and vibrant presence in the Baltimore area. They are served by the Baltimore American Indian Center, Native LifeLines of Baltimore, and other organizations. I have been extraordinarily lucky to meet and get to know some of the brilliant and kind Native American tribal members who go about their lives in this city.

As a local historian in Maryland, I worry that I will never be good enough, because I did not grow up here, and lack valuable insider connections and tacit knowledge. But the experience of researching this 1652 treaty, and bringing it to the forefront of conversation, demonstrates to me that outsider perspectives can also be valuable. Outsiders have a tendency to ask unfamiliar questions about our adopted hometowns. Here is one of mine: To this day, the 1677 Treaty of Middle Plantation governs the relationships between the Commonwealth of Virginia and signatory tribal nations, including the Mattaponi and Pamunkey Tribes who continue to observe the literal terms of the treaty. What might happen if we held Maryland (or the city of Baltimore) to its treaty obligations to tribal nations in a similar way?

1. Louise Akerson, American Indians in the Baltimore Area (Baltimore Center for Urban Archaeology, 1988), 12–14; William B. Marye, “The Great Maryland Barrens: I,” Maryland Historical Magazine, 50, no. 1 (Spring 1955), 16–17. See also Marye, “The Great Maryland Barrens: II,” Maryland Historical Magazine, 50, no. 2 (Summer 1955), 120–42, and Marye, “The Great Maryland Barrens: III,” Maryland Historical Magazine, 50, no. 3 (Fall 1955), 234–52.
2. Archives of Maryland, vol. 3, Proceedings of the Council of Maryland, 1636–1667, ed. William Hand Browne (Maryland Historical Society, 1885), online via Archives of Maryland Online, 277–78; Matthew Kruer, Time of Anarchy: Indigenous Power and the Crisis of Colonialism in Early America (Harvard University Press, 2021), 29–32; “Virginia and Maryland, or the Lord Baltamore’s Printed Case Uncased and Answered,” in Clayton Colman Hall (ed.), Narratives of Early Maryland, 1633–1684 (Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1910), 183–208.
3. Proceedings of the Council of Maryland, 1636–1667, 549–50. My interpretation of this 1666 treaty comes from Michael Witgen, “Seeing Red: Race, Citizenship, and Indigeneity in the Old Northwest,” Journal of the Early Republic 38, no. 4 (2018): 581–611. One excellent resource that incorporates the fall line hypothesis is the Maryland State Arts Council “Land Acknowledgements” webpage, created by Dr. Ryan Koons in collaboration with local tribal members.
4. Archives of Maryland, vol. 2, Proceedings and Acts of the General Assembly of Maryland, April 1666–June 1676, ed. William Hand Browne (Maryland Historical Society, 1884), online via Archives of Maryland Online, 481–83; Kruer, Time of Anarchy, 55–59.
5. For a classic and unflinching take on this history, see Vine Deloria Jr., Custer Died For Your Sins: An Indian Manifesto (Avon Books, 1969), 35–59.
6. Ratified Indian Treaty 283: Dwamish, Suquamish, et al., at Point Elliott, Washington Territory, January 22, 1855, Indian Treaties 1789–1869, General Records of the United States Government, US National Archives and Records Administration.
7. Much more local Indigenous history information has become available online since then, including the ones noted elsewhere in this article, and the Maryland State Archives’ wonderful “Mayis” Indigenous Records Guide.