III.

Provisions

In the proclamation, the king reserved the land between the Appalachian Mountains and the Mississippi River for the Indian groups. The Indian territory was bounded on the south by West Florida and on the west and north by Rupert’s Land, a territory encompassing the vast watershed of Hudson’s Bay, which the British had granted to the Hudson’s Bay Company. The proclamation reduced the size of Québec dramatically. During French rule, the colony had stretched from the St. Lawrence Valley west and south, reaching fur trade lands south of the Great Lakes. Through the proclamation, the British made Québec a narrow parallelogram along the St. Lawrence Valley. The former Spanish colony of Florida was divided into two new ones, East Florida and West Florida. Although the proclamation called for assemblies in the new colonies, a governor appointed by the king held most of the power in each.

The proclamation required settlers to withdraw from the newly established Indian territory and barred traders from entering the region unless they first obtained a license from the governor of one of the colonies. The king also heavily restricted purchases of land in the Indian territory. He stated in the decree, “We do hereby strictly forbid, on pain of our displeasure, all our loving subjects from making any purchases or settlements whatever, or taking possession of any of the lands above reserved, without our especial leave and licence.” If any Indian group wished to sell some of these lands, “the same shall be purchased only for Us, in our Name, at some public meeting or assembly of the said Indians, to be held for the purposes by the Governor.”

The colonial governors relayed the proclamation’s terms to the settlers. At a 1764 conference on the Niagara River in New York, an official from the imperial Indian Department informed 2,000 chiefs from many Indian nations about the terms of the proclamation.