PROCLAMATION OF 1763

PROCLAMATION OF 1763, issued by the British government regulating the settlement of land in North America. It was prepared in part by William Petty Fitzmaurice, Lord Shelburne, and was proclaimed by the Crown on 2 October. By it, parts of the territory in America acquired through the Treaty of Paris earlier in the year were organized as the provinces of Quebec, East Florida, West Florida, and Grenada; the laws of England were extended to these provinces; and provision was made for the establishment of general assemblies in them. Settlement within the new provinces was encouraged by grants of land to British veterans of the French and Indian War.

The proclamation called for a new strategy to conciliate the Indians. The governors of the provinces and colonies were forbidden to grant lands "beyond the Heads or Sources of any of the Rivers which fall into the Atlantic Ocean from the West and North West." An Indian reservation was thus established south of the lands of the Hudson's Bay Company, west of Quebec and the Appalachian Mountains, and north of the boundary line of the Floridas. Settlement upon the Indian lands was prohibited, and settlers already on such lands were commanded "to remove themselves." Furthermore, private purchases of land from the Indians were forbidden; prior acquisitions in the Indian reservation were voided; and future purchases were to be made by licensed traders for the Crown alone.

For more than a decade successive ministries had been dissatisfied with the management of Indian relations by the different colonies. Rivalry among the colonies for Indian trade, and in some cases for western lands, had led to abuses by the governors of their power over trade and land grants, arousing a justified resentment among the Indians. The success of the French in conciliating the Indians strengthened the argument in favor of imperial control of Indian affairs.

The appointment in 1756 of two regional superintendents of Indian affairs had been the first step toward the British government's control of Indian relations. Sir William Johnson, superintendent of the northern Indians, urged the fixing of a line west of which settlement should be prohibited. The danger from the Indians during the French and Indian War automatically fixed such a line at the Appalachian Mountains. Settlers, however, disregarding the proclamations, swarmed over the mountains, and their encroachments were one of the causes of Pontiac's War. The Proclamation of 1763 was an attempt to check their advance until some agreement could be negotiated with the Indians. The proclamation was not intended to change the boundaries of the old colonies; nevertheless, many in the colonies resented it as an interference in their affairs. After Pontiac's War, negotiations with the Indians resulted in the treaties of Hard Labor, Fort Stanwix, and Lochaber, by which a new line was drawn. In 1774 the Quebec Act added the remainder of the Indian reservation north of the Ohio River to the province of Quebec. This aroused resentment in some of the thirteen colonies already close to rebellion, since it was seen as an attempt to deprive them of their claims to western lands.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Jennings, Francis. Empire of Fortune: Crowns, Colonies, and Tribes in the Seven Years War in America. New York: Norton, 1988.

Sosin, Jack M. The Revolutionary Frontier, 1763–1783. New York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, 1967.

Solon J.Buck/a. r.

See alsoFlorida ; Georgiana ; Indian Policy, Colonial ; Indian Reservations ; Paris, Treaty of (1763) ; Western Lands ; Westward Migration .