The French had built a fur trade empire across this territory.

The British had inherited it after the French and Indian War.

The Americans claimed it after the Revolution, though the actual Indigenous nations who lived there had not been consulted about any of these transfers.

The Land Ordinance of 1785 and the Northwest Ordinance of 1787 established the framework by which the United States would transform Native land into American territory: survey it, sell it to settlers, establish territorial governments, and eventually admit it as states.

The entire system was built on the premise that Native people’s occupancy of the land was not equivalent to ownership in the legal sense the American system recognized, and that the government could extinguish Native land title through treaties while providing a legal framework for settlement.