Native Americans were often displaced by treaty, usually enacted with coercion, in which the tribe ceded much of their land to the U.S. and reserved a smaller portion to itself.
As non-Indians moved westward, Native Americans were forced from their ancestral lands through the federal government’s policy of restricting the tribes to specified reservations. When the 1911 map is compared to previous versions, it illustrates how severely Indians lands had been diminished.
Map Showing Indian Reservations Within the Limits of the United States is a part of America’s 100 Docs, an initiative of the National Archives Foundation in partnership with More Perfect that invites the American public to vote on 100 notable documents from the holdings of the National Archives. Visit 100docs.vote today.
