ceded lands
Given-up ground
Ceded lands are territories formally surrendered by one sovereign power to another, typically through treaty.
The term appears most often in discussions of Indigenous land transferred to colonial or federal governments: The tribe seeks compensation for ceded lands in the 1855 treaty.
Unlike seized or conquered territory, ceded implies a legal transfer—though the circumstances of such agreements were often coercive.
- annexationAbsorbing territory into jurisdiction
- treatyBinding pact between nations
- broken treatiesAgreements no longer honored
- Louisiana Purchase1803 territorial acquisition
- Treaty of ParisMajor war-ending diplomatic pact
sacred sites · Black Hills · Cherokee · borders · dispossession · reservation system · Indian Removal Act · forced relocation · indigenous rights · sovereignty movements · reparations · displacement · colonial expansion · Sioux Nation · relinquished · ratification · Manifest Destiny · mineral rights
ceded landsunceded lands
Territory never formally transferred
unceded territory · sovereign territory · homeland · ancestral lands · disputed territory