land treaties
Property transfer documents
Land treaties are formal agreements between governments—or between a government and indigenous peoples—concerning territory.
They may transfer ownership, establish boundaries, grant usage rights, or recognize sovereignty.
In North America, land treaties between colonial powers or the United States and Native American nations often ceded vast territories in exchange for payments, reservations, or promises later broken: The treaty guaranteed the tribe would retain their ancestral hunting grounds.
- Sykes-Picot AgreementWWI-era territorial partition pact
- Indian Removal ActLaw authorizing tribal expulsion
- Louisiana Purchase1803 territorial acquisition
- cessionFormal transfer of territory
- manifest destinyObvious, inescapable fate
indigenous activism · peace pipe · Homestead Act · traditional territories · unceded territory · broken · ancestral lands · broken promises · allotment · sovereignty · tribal councils · indigenous lands · boundaries · conquest · settler colonialism · reservation · sacred · sacred ground
- American frontierfrontier, westward expansion, pioneers, homesteading, homesteads
- land rightseasement, easements, freehold, right of way, leasehold
- treatiestreaties, peace treaties, alliances, diplomatic pacts, bilateral agreements
- Northwest TerritoryNorthwest Territory, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan
- Eastern TribesLenape, Iroquois, Delaware, Mohawk, Seneca
- indigenous landsancestral lands, ancestral territories, ancestral territory, traditional territories, native lands
land treatiesoral agreements
Unwritten binding promises
handshake deals · gentlemen's agreements · gentleman's agreements
land treatiesland seizure
Forcible taking of territory
land theft · dispossession · expropriation · land grabs · annexation