The 1785 Hopewell negotiations opened a relationship between the US and Native nations

Evidence

On November 18, 1785, a contingent of Cherokee people arrived at Hopewell Plantation, on the bucolic banks of a South Carolina river, for a meeting that would help set the structure of the American racial hierarchy for centuries to come. It was the first in a set of negotiations between the United States and the Cherokee, Choctaw, and Chickasaw Nations. In the aftermath of the American Revolution, these negotiations would begin to lay the groundwork for the relationship between the United States and Native governments. If the United States was to consolidate and grow as a country, it had to contend with all of the Indigenous people, who, though devastated by over a century of imperial and colonial battles, were still populous and powerful, and who controlled most of the American continent. — Nikole Hannah-Jones et al., The 1619 Project, 447

Categorization

• XREF: Directly serves the reader’s case study: the Hopewell negotiations are a contender for what the US dates its origin from, comparable to 1619.