Indigenous peoples: loss of land to the United States
For many thousands of years, the area that is now the United States was home to hundreds of nations of Indigenous peoples. The U.S. government took over the vast majority of their land, including through treaties made in bad faith, acts, and force.
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Transcript
For many thousands of years, the area north of the Rio Grande in North America was home to hundreds of nations of indigenous Americans. In the United States today, almost all of this land has been ceded and occupied. Many of today’s Native Americans live on reservations that are tiny fractions of the lands once occupied by their ancestors. If you are of Native American descent, there’s a good chance your family’s history was significantly impacted by this massive loss of territory.
The United States has a long history of acquiring Native American land through government acts and treaties made in bad faith. Some treaties were signed with secret provisions written only in English. Others were signed by false “chiefs” who had no authority to represent the Native American nations. Meanwhile, white colonists often claimed protected land without legal consequences.
In 1787, the third Northwest Ordinance guaranteed that “The utmost good faith shall always be observed toward the Indians; their lands and property shall never be taken from them without their consent…”
But that didn’t last. Within a few decades, the Supreme Court made rulings stripping Native American nations of their rights — including the right to be treated as foreign nations of equal sovereignty.
In 1830, US Congress passed the Indian Removal Act, forcing many indigenous peoples east of the Mississippi from their lands. While the act called for negotiation with indigenous peoples, President Andrew Jackson resorted to force.
The violent relocation of an estimated 100,000 Eastern Woodlands indigenous people from the East to the West is known today as the Trail of Tears.
The Indian Appropriation Act, in 1871, also changed things dramatically. The United States now took the position that no Native American group would be treated as an independent nation. More and more of their land was converted to reservations or seized.
In the late nineteenth century, US policy became increasingly focused on assimilation — an idea resisted by Native American nations determined to maintain their sovereignty. Conflicts stemming from this policy persist to this day.
In 1887, the Dawes Act made the US government responsible for the distribution of land in reservations. Much of the reservation land was subsequently sold to the public. The result was greatly reduced reservations, and less tribal control over reservations.
Today, just over 56 million acres of land exist as Native American reservations — about two percent of the ancestral indigenous land that the United States occupies.