 The treaty also acknowledged that the tribal territories defined therein were minimum territories and that it didn't preclude the existence of additional tribal territories not mentioned in the treaty.The treaty did not - as is often falsely assumed - "allocate territory" to various tribes but merely endeavoured to make declaratory delineations of already existing sovereign tribal lands through which the US merely secured a right of way.Initially, the land, often called "the Great American Desert," was of little interest to the United States and white settlers.