s it became apparent to the Indigenous Peoples that the Europeans intended to stay in North America, they sought to formalize their relationships with the newcomers through treaties of alliance, peace, and friendship. Before the arrival of the Europeans, Indigenous Peoples had their own protocols for negotiating treaties among themselves. The Europeans were also accustomed to entering into treaties with other nations. Nation-to-nation treaty relationships were therefore familiar to both sides.
An early example of a treaty of peace and friendship is the Two-Row-Wampum Treaty entered into by the Haudenosaunee (Iroquois Confederacy) and the British Crown in 1664 at Albany (now in New York State). Under the terms of this treaty, each party acknowledged the sovereign independence of the other, and agreed not to interfere with it. The British entered into another peace and friendship treaty at Boston in 1725 with, among other Indigenous Peoples, the Mi’kmaq Nation.
By these treaties, the Indigenous parties retained their complete independence as sovereign nations and ownership of their lands and resources. They did not transfer or cede jurisdiction or land rights to the British Crown. Other treaties in what were then the Thirteen Colonies to the south of Canada may, however, have involved land cessions.
From 1756 to 1763, France and Britain fought a major war, known in North America as the French and Indian War. Britain won, and formally acquired France’s North American possessions east of the Mississippi River by the Treaty of Paris of 1763. This included all of French Canada (La Nouvelle France), the extent of which has never been determined.
A few months later, the British Crown issued the Royal Proclamation of 1763. Among other things, this document protected the land rights of the Indigenous nations by prohibiting private persons from settling on or purchasing their lands. The proclamation also created a formal process for transferring Indigenous lands to the Crown. Although the proclamation purportedly applied to the Indigenous nations with whom the Crown was connected and who lived under the Crown’s protection, its geographical scope has always been uncertain.
In 1764, Sir William Johnson, the British official responsible for relations with the Indigenous nations of northeastern North America, convened a meeting at Niagara with the leaders of many nations from around the Great Lakes and beyond and explained the Royal Proclamation to them. This led to an agreement, known as the Treaty of Niagara, which affirmed that the Indian nations would remain independent, as provided by the Two Row Wampum Treaty.
The defeat of the French and issuance of the Royal Proclamation of 1763 heralded the beginning of a major shift in British Indian policy. Because the Crown no longer needed the Indigenous nations as allies against the French, it began to assert authority over them and their lands. This process accelerated after the American Revolutionary War and the War of 1812, during which some Indigenous nations fought alongside the British. Instead of regarding them as independent sovereigns to be interacted with on a nation-to-nation basis, as it had usually done in the past and as promised in the Treaty of Niagara, the Crown began to treat them as subjects who were under the Crown’s jurisdiction.