In 1778, the Continental Congress signed the first treaty between the United States and an indigenous people, the Delaware Nation. Over the last two hundred years, more than 500 treaties, executive orders and acts of Congress have since been passed thereby transforming the lived and spatial experience of Indigenous people within these territories.
Use the arrows to navigate through our timeline and explore the evolution of the visual and geographic representation of the North American land mass. Maps are arranged by the year issued and treaties are arranged by the date signed. Each map includes the original title, a physical description of the size of the original and an attribution to the cartographer and engraver. Each treaty includes the exact date, title, an excerpt of text and an image, often of a digitized version of the original document.
All map images were originally obtained from the New York Public Library Digital Collections and are believed to be in the Public Domain. All of the treaty images are attributed to the the digital collection they were found in and are believed to be in the Public Domain.
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