Natives lose their land in the USA and Canada

The USA and Canada began at the end of the eighteenth century, covering only part of their present area. Over the next hundred years they expanded:

• The USA bought land from France (the Louisiana Purchase, 1803) and from Russia (Alaska), and won much of the south from Mexico in war. Nobody thought to ask the natives living there.
• The western 'frontier' kept moving, and as it moved, the natives were pushed back.

Settlers and the land. Many immigrants wanted land of their own: younger sons from Britain and France who would inherit nothing, and later Germans, Swedes, Italians and Poles who had lost land at home. They cleared huge areas, grew crops such as rice and cotton for sale in Europe, and hunted wolves and mountain lions to extinction to protect their farms; barbed wire (1873) made them feel secure. In the hot south, plantation owners bought slaves from Africa. The southern states wanted to keep slavery and the northern states opposed it; the Civil War of 1861 to 1865 ended slavery, though African Americans won full civil rights only in the twentieth century. Canada, meanwhile, was absorbed in settling the demands of its French settlers, solved by forming the Confederation of Canada (1867).

How natives lost their land. Natives were persuaded or forced to sign treaties selling their land, at very low prices, and were sometimes cheated. The Cherokee of Georgia had made the most effort of any tribe to learn English and the American way of life, yet were denied the rights of citizens. In 1832, Chief Justice John Marshall ruled that they were 'a distinct community' with sovereignty in certain matters. President Andrew Jackson refused to honour the ruling and sent the army to drive them west. Of about 15,000 people forced to go, over a quarter died on what became known as the 'Trail of Tears'.

• Those who took native land claimed the natives did not deserve it because they did not use it to the full, and called them lazy for not producing goods for sale or learning English.
• Natives were moved to land promised 'in perpetuity', then moved again if lead, gold or oil was found. Several tribes were often crowded together into small areas called reservations, with which they had no earlier connection.
• They fought back: the US army crushed rebellions between 1865 and 1890, and in Canada the Metis (people of mixed native and European descent) rose in revolt between 1869 and 1885.

In 1854, when the US President asked Chief Seattle to sell a large part of his people's land, the Chief replied: 'How can you buy or sell the sky, the warmth of the land? ... Every part of the earth is sacred to my people.'

Gold, railways and industry. Gold was found in California in the 1840s, and the Gold Rush brought thousands hoping to get rich. Transcontinental railways were built, with the labour of thousands of Chinese workers, completed in the USA by 1870 and Canada by 1885. Industries grew to make railway equipment and farm machinery: in 1860 the USA was undeveloped, by 1890 it was the world's leading industrial power. By 1890 the bison had been almost wiped out, ending the natives' hunting way of life. In 1892 the USA's continental expansion was complete, and it soon took colonies of its own in Hawaii and the Philippines.

Rights for whom? The USA prided itself on its democratic spirit and the individual's right to property. But both voting rights and property rights were, at first, only for white men.

Winds of change. A survey led by Lewis Meriam in 1928, The Problem of Indian Administration, exposed the terrible health and education conditions on reservations. This led to the Indian Reorganisation Act of 1934, which gave natives in reservations the right to buy land and take loans. In the 1950s and 1960s, the US and Canadian governments wanted natives to 'join the mainstream' by ending special provisions, but the natives refused:

• In the 1954 Declaration of Indian Rights, native peoples accepted US citizenship on condition that their reservations would not be taken away and their traditions not interfered with.
• In Canada, the government said in 1969 it would 'not recognise aboriginal rights'. After organised protests, the Constitution Act of 1982 accepted the natives' existing aboriginal and treaty rights.
• Though far fewer than before, native peoples in both countries have won the right to their own cultures and, especially in Canada, to their sacred lands.