Between 1776 and 1887, the United States seized over 1.5 billion acres from America’s indigenous people by treaty and executive order. Watch Native Americans’ land evaporate at The Invasion of America, an interactive map that illustrates how the U.S. took over an eighth of the world.
Produced by University of Georgia historian Claudio Saunt to accompany his new book West of the Revolution: An Uncommon History of 1776, the site is a time-lapse vision of the transfer of Indian land between 1776 and 1887. As blue “Indian homelands” disappear, small red areas appear, indicating the establishment of reservations.
[via the invaluable Rebecca Onion]
* Chief Joseph-Nez Perce
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As we redraw the Caucasian Chalk Circle, we might recall that it was on this date in 1868 that Navajos signed a treaty of capitulation after the Long Walk: Kit Carson had rounded up 8,000 Navajos and forced them to walk from their traditional home in Eastern Arizona more than 300 miles to the Bosque Redondo in southern New Mexico– a “reservation” that to all appearances was more like a prison camp.
Navajo on the Long Walk
