Colonists Move West of the Appalachians

At the close of the French and Indian War, Britain's Proclamation of 1763 forbade colonial settlement west of the Appalachian crest, reserving that vast interior for the Native nations who lived there. The line was meant to keep peace on the frontier, but it ran against the deepest currents of colonial life: a booming population, speculators holding western land claims, and frontier families hungry for cheap soil. Settlers ignored the proclamation almost from the day it was issued, streaming through the mountain gaps into Kentucky, Tennessee, and the Ohio valley.

To the Shawnee, Cherokee, Delaware, and other nations of the interior, this tide of squatters was an invasion. The newcomers cleared hunting grounds, built forts, and claimed land by occupation rather than treaty, igniting a generation of frontier warfare marked by raids, reprisals, and massacres on both sides. Independence only quickened the advance, as the new United States organized the western territories for sale and settlement. The struggle for the land beyond the mountains would not be settled until the Native confederacies of the Ohio country were defeated by force in the 1790s.