America 250: A Republic Built on Native Land by Levi Rickert July 2, 2026
Editor’s Note: This article is part of Native News Online’s America 250: A Republic Built on Native Land initiative.
As the United States marks its 250th anniversary in 2026, Americans are reflecting on the nation’s founding, its ideals, and its history. Yet any honest examination of the American story must also acknowledge a fundamental truth: the United States was built on lands that had been inhabited, governed, and cared for by Indigenous nations for thousands of years before the Declaration of Independence was signed. The story of America is inseparable from the story of Native peoples, whose homelands became the foundation upon which the republic expanded.
From the earliest days of the United States, federal leaders pursued policies that opened Native lands to settlement, agriculture, commerce, and statehood. Through treaties, warfare, forced removals, land purchases, allotment policies, and acts of Congress, Indigenous nations lost control of vast portions of their ancestral territories. While American history often celebrates expansion as a symbol of progress and opportunity, Native communities experienced many of these same events as dispossession, displacement, and attacks on their sovereignty. The growth of the republic came at a tremendous cost to the first peoples of this continent.
The following timeline traces key moments in the loss of Native land from the founding of the United States through the nineteenth century. It is not a complete history, but it highlights how federal policies and territorial expansion reshaped Indigenous homelands across North America. As Americans commemorate 250 years of nationhood, this timeline invites reflection on a deeper and more complex history—one that recognizes both the resilience of Native nations and the reality that the United States became a continental power through the acquisition of Native land. History Timeline of Native American Land Loss (1776–1887)
1776 – United States Declares Independence The United States declared independence from Great Britain. Native nations were not included in the new government, despite occupying and governing much of the land claimed by the United States. For many Indigenous nations, the Revolutionary War marked the beginning of a new struggle to protect their homelands from American expansion.
1783 – Treaty of Paris The Treaty of Paris ended the Revolutionary War. Great Britain ceded its claims to lands east of the Mississippi River to the United States without consulting the Native nations who lived there. Although Britain could not legally transfer Indigenous-owned lands, the treaty allowed the United States to claim authority over vast territories and set the stage for continued encroachment on Native homelands.
1787 – Northwest Ordinance The Northwest Ordinance established a process for creating new U.S. territories and states in the Northwest Territory. While the ordinance acknowledged Native land rights in principle, it also encouraged settlement and expansion into Indigenous territories, leading to increased conflict between Native nations and American settlers.
Late 1700s–Early 1800s – Treaty-Making and Land Cessions Throughout the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, the United States negotiated hundreds of treaties with Native nations. These agreements transferred millions of acres of land to the federal government. Many treaties were negotiated under unequal conditions, and numerous treaty promises were later ignored or violated by the United States.
1803 – Louisiana Purchase The United States completed the Louisiana Purchase, acquiring approximately 828,000 square miles of territory from France. The purchase was negotiated without the participation or consent of the many Native nations already living throughout the region. Although Indigenous nations continued to govern their communities, the purchase dramatically expanded U.S. claims and accelerated westward expansion, increasing pressure on tribes to cede land through treaties and other agreements.
Early 1800s – Jeffersonian Indian Policy Under President Thomas Jefferson, federal policy emphasized acquiring Native lands through treaties, promoting cultural assimilation, and encouraging eastern tribes to relocate west of the Mississippi River. These policies contributed to the gradual erosion of tribal sovereignty and territorial control while laying the groundwork for later removal policies.
1821 – Mexican Independence Mexico gained independence from Spain and assumed control over a vast territory that included present-day Texas, California, Arizona, New Mexico, Nevada, Utah, and portions of Colorado and Wyoming. Mexican settlement policies often conflicted with Indigenous land use and sovereignty, placing additional pressure on Native nations in the Southwest.
1830 – Indian Removal Act Congress passed the Indian Removal Act, authorizing the federal government to negotiate the relocation of Native nations east of the Mississippi River to lands in present-day Oklahoma. The policy led to the forced removal of tribes including the Cherokee, Muscogee (Creek), Chickasaw, Choctaw, and Seminole. Thousands died from disease, exposure, starvation, and exhaustion during these removals, including along the route known as the Trail of Tears.
1846–1848 – U.S.-Mexican War and Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo The United States defeated Mexico in the U.S.-Mexican War. Under the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, Mexico ceded approximately half of its territory to the United States. Native nations living within these lands were not consulted or included in treaty negotiations. The transfer expanded U.S. authority across the Southwest and intensified pressure on Indigenous communities through settlement, military campaigns, and federal land policies.
1853 – Gadsden Purchase The Gadsden Purchase added additional land in present-day southern Arizona and New Mexico to the United States. Native nations living in the region were not parties to the agreement, which further expanded U.S. control over Indigenous homelands.
Mid-1800s – Reservation Era Expands As settlers moved westward, the federal government increasingly confined Native nations to reservations through treaties, executive orders, and military force. Many tribes were removed from traditional homelands and restricted to smaller land bases, often far from culturally significant places and traditional food sources.
1871 – End of Treaty-Making Congress ended the practice of making treaties with Native nations through the Indian Appropriations Act of 1871. Tribes remained sovereign governments, but the policy marked a significant shift in federal Indian relations and reflected a reduced recognition of tribes as independent treaty-making nations.
1887 – Dawes Act (General Allotment Act) Congress passed the Dawes Act, dividing communally held tribal lands into individual allotments. Lands deemed “surplus” after allotment were opened to non-Native settlement. The policy resulted in the loss of tens of millions of acres of tribal land and significantly weakened tribal land bases across the United States.
By the End of the Nineteenth Century Through warfare, removal, treaty-making, allotment, and settlement policies, Native-controlled lands had been reduced from most of North America to a small fraction of their original homelands. While Indigenous nations survived and maintained their sovereignty, cultures, and governments, the nineteenth century fundamentally reshaped the geography of Native America and the relationship between tribal nations and the United States.
Native News Online intern Zaynab Farran (Potawatomi) contributed to this article.
Hey, tell this crap to Biden/Harris for letting our predominately...
Mondo Fuego™, just consider all the many millions of people our own nation has killed during its history. Why is that somehow okay? Double standards don't improve murder and destruction.
Posted by Christopher Blackwell on July 4, 2026, 7:18 am, in reply to "Because it is NOW."
Mondo Fuego™, So how does it being now change making doing evil things not matter. You imply a double standard, when they were doing it was evil, but perfectly okay if we do it. Not exactly logical. [grin]
But our present civilization is built on information from earlier civilizations in Africa, not just in Egypt, in the Middle East, including Muslim ones, in Asia, and from earlier native cultures before any civilization existed at all.
To over evaluate our present country you must ignore what came before from some of the people you want to get rid of, and those present people helped create America as well. You choose to forget so much of what led to our country becoming. How frightened the so-called White race has become as they destroy their own country though their continued greed and corruption. That has always been what has created the collapse we have been building for generations. The White Race refuses to cleanse itself of its own weakness and take responsibility for its own problems, instead of blaming it all on others like any other cowardly people. Our collapse will be deserved until we take the responsibly to change ourselves.
Never studied much about the various wars? Sort of a major part of mankind's history. Think of how much richer people would have been if they had not spent so much time destroying each other and the endless rebuilding and continues suffering.
Meanwhile, I continue to study history.
At least 99% of all humans displaced or conquered earlier humans. Learn some history.
You cannot simply accept the winner's word about what REALLY happened. They, of course, are going to paint themselves in the best possible light. They won't tell you what the people they wiped out contributed .. what their arts were, what customs they treasured...
Indeed. The history of conflict is written by the winners...and much of human history is conflict.
DFM, History gets written by the winner, but alone it is only propaganda. Information about what got lost by the conquering fills out what is not mentioned. All the lost cultures, lost languages, lost customs, lost art, and lost history had value no longer available to the world.
Hence, it is valuable to recognize the cost of our present culture and civilizations. It is like the loss we face in a society that tries to standardize us and make us all the same in order to control us.
Ultimately power is about controlling other people and making them dependent on those who gain power by taking away the other people's independence.
I am sorry that you do not understand, and are not interested in the price so many others paid. Much like the price that the Jews have paid so many times and some people would like us to forget.
