chapter 2._

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NORTHWEST TERRITORY OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. The Old.

"This northwestern land lay between the Mississippi, the Ohio, and the Great Lakes. It now constitutes five of our large States and part of a sixth [namely, western Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Wisconsin, and Michigan]. But when independence was declared it was quite as much a foreign territory, considered from the standpoint of the old thirteen colonies, as Florida or Canada; the difference was that, whereas during the war we failed in our attempts to conquer Florida and Canada, we succeeded in conquering the Northwest. The Northwest formed no part of our country as it originally stood; it had no portion in the declaration of independence. It did not revolt; it was conquered. … We made our first important conquest during the Revolution itself."

_T. Roosevelt, The Winning of the West, volume 1, pages 32-33._

NORTHWEST TERRITORY OF USA: A. D. 1673-1751. Early French exploration and occupation.

See CANADA: A. D. 1634-1673; 16611-1687; 1700-1735; also ILLINOIS: A. D. 1700-1750; and 1751.

NORTHWEST TERRITORY OF USA: A. D. 1748-1763. Struggle of the French and English for possession.

See OHIO (VALLEY): A. D. 1748-1754, 1754, 1755; and CANADA: A. D. 1758.

NORTHWEST TERRITORY OF USA: A. D. 1763. Cession to Great Britain by the Treaty of Paris. Possession taken.

See SEVEN YEARS WAR: THE TREATIES; and ILLINOIS: A. D. 1765.

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NORTHWEST TERRITORY OF USA: A. D. 1763. The king's proclamation excluding settlers, and reserving the whole interior of the continent for the Indians.

"On the 7th of October, 1763, George III. issued a proclamation, providing for four new governments or colonies, namely: Quebec, East Florida, West Florida, and Grenada [the latter embracing 'the island of that name, together with the Grenadines, and the islands of Dominico, St. Vincent and 'Tobago'], and defining their boundaries. The limits of Quebec did not vary materially from those of the present province of that name, and those of East and West Florida comprised the present State of Florida and the country north of the Gulf of Mexico to the parallel of 31° latitude. It will be seen that no provision was made for the government of nine tenths of the new territory acquired by the Treaty of Paris, and the omission was not an oversight, but was intentional. The purpose was to reserve as crown lands the Northwest territory, the region north of the great lakes, and the country between the Alleghanies and the Mississippi, and to exclude them from settlement by the American colonies. They were left, for the time being, to the undisputed possession of the savage tribes. The king's 'loving subjects' were forbidden making purchases of land from the Indians, or forming any settlements 'westward of the sources of the rivers which fall into the sea from the West and Northwest,' 'and all persons who have wilfully or inadvertently seated themselves upon any lands' west of this limit were warned 'forthwith to remove themselves from such settlements.' Certain reasons for this policy were assigned in the proclamation, such as, 'preventing irregularities in the future, and that the Indians may be convinced of our justice,' etc.; but the real explanation appears in the Report of the Lords Commissioners for Trade and Plantations, in 1772, on the petition of Thomas Walpole and others for a grant of land on the Ohio. The report was drawn by Lord Hillsborough, the president of the board. The report states: 'We take leave to remind your lordships of that principle which was adopted by this Board, and approved and confirmed by his Majesty, immediately after the Treaty of Paris, viz.: the confining the western extent of settlements to such a distance from the sea-coasts as that those settlements should lie within reach of the trade and commerce of this kingdom, … and also of the exercise of that authority and jurisdiction which was conceived to be necessary for the preservation of the colonies in a due subordination to, and dependence upon, the mother country. And these we apprehend to have been the two capital objects of his Majesty's proclamation of the 7th of October, 1763. … The great object of colonizing upon the continent of North America has been to improve and extend the commerce, navigation, and manufactures of this kingdom. … It does appear to us that the extension of the fur trade depends entirely upon the Indians being undisturbed in the possession of their hunting-grounds, and that all colonizing does in its nature, and must in its consequences, operate to the prejudice of that branch of commerce. … Let the Savages enjoy their deserts in quiet. Were they driven from their forests the peltry-trade would decrease.' … Such in clear and specific terms was the cold and selfish policy which the British crown and its ministers habitually pursued towards the American colonies; and in a few years it changed loyalty into hate, and brought on the American Revolution."

_W. F. Poole, The West, from 1763 to 1783 (Narrative and Critical History of America, volume 6, chapter 9)._

"The king's proclamation [of 1763] shows that, in the construction put upon the treaty by the crown authorities, the ceded territory was a new acquisition by conquest. The proclamation was the formal appropriation of it as the king's domain, embracing all the country west of the heads or sources of the rivers falling into the Atlantic."

_R. King, Ohio,