The Royal Proclamation of 1763

American school children are routinely taught that the American Revolution was a rebellion against taxation without representation.  And, while taxes on stamps and tea may have been an issue for Americans in urban areas along the East Coast, there was a far more pressing issue out west-land.

The push to go west was a part of American culture long before we existed as a country.  As cities grew and more Settlers arrived here, there was only one place for them to go, further west.  As land became exhausted through farming and deforestation, or younger sons and brothers needed a way to make a living, the only thing for them to do was to look for land and opportunity in the backcountry, overmountain, and encroaching further and further on Native hunting ranges.  Prior to the French and Indian/Seven Years War (1755-1763), France owned the land that now forms the Missouri and Mississippi draining basin.  However, it was a large area to police and American settlers routinely trespassed on it, keeping the frontier in almost constant turmoil.  Both England and France depended heavily on local citizen militias and Native auxiliaries to fight their colonial wars for them.  The incentive for the Natives was to back the power which provided greater assurance of their land rights.  The incentive for White militiamen was the possibility of land grants of western land.  So sure were these men that they would have a share of the western land that speculation was a booming business, with men such as George Washington laying claim to large swathes of the Ohio Valley sight unseen, in an investment they intended to divide and sell some day.

When the War was settled with the Treaty of Paris in 1763, all of France's possessions in America were turned over to Britain.  No one bothered to deal with Native claims to their homelands and hunting ranges, or the interests of land speculators or veterans who felt they were entitled to a share of the spoils.  The Crown instead promptly passed the Royal Proclamation of 1763.  In part, it divided up the former French lands for administrative purposes.  Then it dashed speculators hopes by declaring that all the land from the Mississippi River to the Appalachian Mountains was an Indian Reserve and barred to White settlement.  While White hunters could hunt and trap on this land, assuming a war party didn't catch them doing so, they were barred from settling on the land.  Further, colonies and private individuals were forbidden from selling or buying the land.  Great Britain hoped to keep peace with the Natives, promote settlement in America and open the land in future to settlement in an orderly progression.  For that reason, they assigned an arbitrary cutoff.  Land drained by rivers flowing east to the Atlantic was open to settlement.  Land drained by rivers flowing into the Mississippi watershed was off limits.

This simplistic solution left nobody happy.  Colonel governments and land speculators saw their investment disappearing before their eyes.  Veterans felt cheated of part of their incentive for fighting what had been a long and vicious war.  Anyone wanting, or needing, to head west to find a piece of land to support themselves and a family had to do so illegally, by scouting
a piece of land and squatting, dodging any Natives who might object.  The Natives came to understand that the British weren't anymore interested in helping them protect their hunting ranges than the French had been.  It was up to them.  Shawnee, Ottawa, Cherokee and other raiding parties made repeated attacks on isolated farms and settlements.  The Settlers retaliated in kind and the frontier was as violent a place as ever.  The colonists were caught in a vicious cycle.  They couldn't expect Crown protection, since settling on this land was a violation of law, yet they felt that Britain, by not curbing the Natives and upholding the rights of Whites to settle on this land, didn't have the right population's interests at heart.  Americans came to believe that they were required to foot the bill for the Seven Years War as a series of taxes on stamps, tea and other luxury goods streamed from London, cutting into American trade.  They also felt that Britain was tying their hands by not allowing settlement of the western frontier beyond the Appalachians. 

The Proclamation of 1763 was one of a series of Crown laws and directives known as the Intolerable Acts.  It's considered one of many inexorable steps to Revolution and separation between Britain and the United States, so much so that it has been commemorated in the over 250 years since its passing, as in the Franklin Mint commemorative pictured.  Even after the Revolution, portions of the Proclamation Line in Canada remained off-limits to settlement and formed the basis of continuing treaties with tribes there.  In the United States, the principle that the federal government was the proper entity to treat with Native nations for land carried over, although the boundary for settlement was gradually and inevitably adjusted west and ultimately ignored.