Proclamation of 1763

Proclamation of 1763, proclamation declared by the British crown at the end of the French and Indian War in North America, mainly intended to conciliate the Native Americans by checking the encroachment of settlers on their lands. In the centuries since the proclamation, it has become one of the cornerstones of Native American law in the United States and Canada.

After Native American grievances had resulted in the start of Pontiac’s War (1763–64), British authorities determined to subdue intercolonial rivalries and abuses by dealing with Native American problems as a whole. To that end, the proclamation organized new British territories in America—the provinces of Quebec, East and West Florida, and Grenada (in the Windward Islands)—and a vast British-administered Native American reservation west of the Appalachians, from south of Hudson Bay to north of the Floridas. It forbade settlement on Native American territory, ordered those settlers already there to withdraw, and strictly limited future settlement. For the first time in the history of European colonization in the New World, the proclamation formalized the concept of Native American land titles, prohibiting issuance of patents to any lands claimed by a tribe unless the Native American title had first been extinguished by purchase or treaty:

And whereas it is just and reasonable and essential to our interest and the security of our colonies that the several nations or tribes of Indians with whom we are connected, and who live under our protection, should not be molested or disturbed in the possession of such parts of our dominions and territories as, not having been ceded to or purchased by us, are reserved to them, or any of them, as their hunting grounds; we do therefore…declare it to be our royal will and pleasure that no governor or commander in chief, in any of our colonies of Quebec, East Florida, or West Florida, do presume, upon any pretense whatever, to grant warrants of survey or pass any patents for lands beyond the bounds of their respective governments.…

And whereas great frauds and abuses have been committed in the purchasing lands of the Indians, to the great prejudice of our interests and to the great dissatisfaction of the said Indians; in order, therefore, to prevent such irregularities for the future, and to the end that the Indians may be convinced of our justice and determined resolution to remove all reasonable cause of discontent, we…strictly enjoin and require that no private person do presume to make any purchase from the said Indians of any lands reserved to the said Indians within those parts of our colonies where we have thought proper to allow settlement; but that if at any time any of the said Indians should be inclined to dispose of the said lands, the same shall be purchased only for us, in our name, at some public meeting or assembly of the said Indians, to be held for that purpose by the governor or commander in chief of our colony, respectively, within which they shall lie.

Although not intended to alter western boundaries, the proclamation was nevertheless offensive to the colonies as undue interference in their affairs. Treaties following Pontiac’s War drew a line of settlement more acceptable to colonial settlers (see Fort Stanwix, Treaties of), but the continued westward movement of pioneers and the settlers’ disregard of the proclamation’s provisions evoked decades of continued Native American warfare throughout the area. The addition of the balance of territory north of the Ohio River to Quebec in 1774 further exacerbated colonial conflict with Britain.