Indian Treaty-Making Policy in the United States and Canada, 1867-1877 is a comparison of United States and Canadian Indian policies with emphasis on the reasons these governments embarked on treaty-making ventures in the 1860s and 1870s, how they conducted those negotiations, and their results. Jill St. Germain challenges assertions made by the Canadian government in 1877 of the superiority and distinctiveness of Canada's Indian policy compared to that of the United States. Indian treaties were the primary instruments of Indian relations in both British North America and the United States starting in the eighteenth century. At Medicine Lodge Creek in 1867 and at Fort Laramie in 1868, the United States concluded a series of important treaties with the Sioux, Cheyennes, Kiowas, and Comanches, while Canada negotiated the seven Numbered Treaties between 1871 and 1877 with the Crees, Ojibwas, and Blackfoot. St. Germain explores the common roots of Indian policy in the two nations and charts the divergences in the application of the reserve and "civilization" policies that both governments embedded in treaties as a way to address the "Indian problem" in the West. Though Canadian Indian policies are often cited as a model that the United States should have followed, St. Germain shows that these policies have sometimes been as dismal and fraught with misunderstanding as those enacted by the United States. Jill St. Germain is an independent writer and researcher.

"Indian Treaty-Making Policy in the United States and Canada, 1867-1877" is a comparison of United States and Canadian Indian policies with emphasis on the reasons these governments embarked on treaty-making ventures in the 1860s and 1870s, how they conducted those negotiations, and their results. Jill St. Germain challenges assertions made by the Canadian government in 1877 of the superiority and distinctiveness of Canada's Indian policy compared to that of the United States. Indian treaties were the primary instruments of Indian relations in both British North America and the United States starting in the eighteenth century. At Medicine Lodge Creek in 1867 and at Fort Laramie in 1868, the United States concluded a series of important treaties with the Sioux, Cheyennes, Kiowas, and Comanches, while Canada negotiated the seven Numbered Treaties between 1871 and 1877 with the Crees, Ojibwas, and Blackfoot. St. Germain explores the common roots of Indian policy in the two nations and charts the divergences in the application of the reserve and "civilization" policies that both governments embedded in treaties as a way to address the "Indian problem" in the West. Though Canadian Indian policies are often cited as a model that the United States should have followed, St. Germain shows that these policies have sometimes been as dismal and fraught with misunderstanding as those enacted by the United States.

"Broken Treaties" is a comparative assessment of Indian treaty negotiation and implementation focusing on the first decade following the United States-Lakota Treaty of 1868 and Treaty Six between Canada and the Plains Cree (1876). Jill St. Germain argues that the "broken treaties" label imposed by nineteenth-century observers and perpetuated in the historical literature has obscured the implementation experience of both Native and non-Native participants and distorted our understanding of the relationships between them. As a result, historians have ignored the role of the Treaty of 1868 as the instrument through which the United States and the Lakotas mediated the cultural divide separating them in the period between 1868 and 1875. In discounting the treaty historians have also failed to appreciate the broader context of U.S. politics, which undermined a treaty solution to the Black Hills crisis in 1876. In Canada, on the other hand, the "broken treaties" tradition has obscured the distinctly different understanding of Treaty Six held by Canada and the Plains Cree. The inability of either party to appreciate the other's position fostered the damaging misunderstanding that culminated in the Northwest Rebellion of 1885. In the first critical assessment of the implementation of these treaties, "Broken Treaties" restores Indian treaties to a central position in the investigation of Native-non-Native relations in the United States and Canada.