Indian land cessions

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From 1778 to 1871, the U.S. signed 368 treaties with different indigenous tribes across North America. These treaties were based on the fundamental concept that each Native American tribe was a sovereign nation. But as white immigrants started moving onto Indigenous American lands, this concept confronted the rigid pace of westward expansion. As a result, many promises were broken by the U.S. government.

Here is the map of the United States with Native American territory if they didn’t break the treaty.

Below are five maps in a chronological series created by Sam B. Hillard showing post-colonial land cessions in the continental United States. Two additional maps show land claims by tribe and present-day Indian reservations. The objectives are to bring together material relating to Indian land losses and present them in a concise, readable form, and to display graphically the rapid erosion of Indian lands over a relatively short period. For this reason, it is essential to realize precisely what the maps show and what they do not show. The series of land cessions only deals with cessions and not with creating reservations. This is important to remember since some reservations were established on land long claimed by the tribe, in which case such land was never formally ceded. In other instances, reservations were created out of land previously ceded and will appear as such only on the special map of current reservations.

The chronological series is arranged so that each map covers a period in which cessions of a particular type were prevalent or where land transfers were most active in specific areas. Each map groups land cessions Into four periods, shown in different shades. Lines within color areas denote individual tracts that were ceded by separate negotiations.

During the first tew decades of Federal-Indian relations, lessons were small and usually only a peripheral part of tribal claims. This was especially true during the period up to 1810 as the eastern tribes were well organized, and the demand for land by whites was moderate. But with the close of the War of 1812 and the subsequent push into both the Gulf and Lake Plains, larger land cessions were sought. By mid-century, the method of cessions had reversed. Instead of ceding parts of their clam, the Indians found themselves confined to small reserves while the remainder of their land was opened to white settlement. Though not universal, it was common practice to confer with the various tribes to determine their areal claims, then negotiate for the cession of all or a portion of the claim.

The second quarter of the nineteenth century also saw a change in the policy of dealing with the Indians. Instead of establishing reserves within the traditional homeland, he was moved onto supposedly “permanent” Indian reserves in what later became Kansas and Oklahoma. However, the map series shows only the “first” cessions in Kansas and Oklahoma and does not deal with lands reassigned to other tribes (m some cases more than once).

Among the more calloused and unorthodox negotiations were those dealing with the California Indians around mid-century. Anticipating the Indian-white conflict that was sure to develop due to gold discovery, agents were dispatched from Washington to secure treaties with the California Indians. A number were concluded in which the Indian groups gave up their territorial claims in return for reservations. However, pressure in Congress by whites who wanted no land granted to California Indians blocked the ratification of the treaties. Since the Indians already had abandoned their homelands for the new, non-existent reservations, they were left landless to illustrate this; the 1840-1850 map shows the land ceded by the treaties in 1851 and the reservations ceded during the following period. But there were never any reservations, the land was simply appreciated.

The scale of the maps necessitated omission to small plots. A number of such parcels were created in the Old Northwest as the Lake Plains were carved up, and small parcels (some section sized or lost) commonly occurred either as cessions to whites or as reserves left to the Indians after the surrounding area was ceded. Other small plots that are omitted are the fragmented reservations in Southern California, the New Mexico Pueblos, and a few small plots in the Pacrtc Northwest, Minnesota, Iowa, and Kansas.

The map showing Indian claims may differ somewhat from typical maps that show the distribution of the American Indian by the tribe. The two show considerable similarity but the former indicates claims that were recognized at the time of cession and may reflect substantial migration during the 150-300 years which might have elapsed between initial contact and cession negotiation.

The map showing present Indian reservations is taken from current Bureau of Indian Affairs information. However, like the map series, small plots cannot be shown effectively and are omitted. The map of present Indian reservations shows a number of reserves that were created out of land that had been ceded earlier. For example, the huge Navajo Reservation; its core was never coded by the Navajo and showed on the last map in the series, yet it has been augmented several times by additional tracts to make up its present size.

Data used in the construction of these maps are from some sources. The most important is the monumental work by Charles C. Royce, Indian Land Cessions In the United States. They are published by the Bureau of American Ethnology as part of its Annual Report of 1899.

Here is another animated map that shows U.S. Native land loss from 1776 to 1930.