17631776 Club
George III draws a line down the Appalachians and forbids the colonies to cross it
Land west of the mountains is reserved for Indigenous nations; Crown officials alone may buy it.
Nine months after the Treaty of Paris handed Britain a continent's worth of former French territory, King George III moved to control who could settle it. On October 7, 1763, he issued a royal proclamation drawing a boundary along the Appalachian watershed and forbidding colonists from settling, or buying land, west of it. Only the Crown, meeting Indigenous nations directly, could now purchase western land. Colonial speculators who had already staked claims there, including George Washington, demanded the Crown reverse course…
