fter 1763, treaties between the Aboriginal nations and the Crown evolved from treaties of peace and friendship into treaties for the acquisition of lands by the Crown. The Crown assumed that it already had sovereignty over the Aboriginal nations and their territories in eastern North America, and began to negotiate what it regarded as land cession treaties in accordance with the provisions of the Royal Proclamation.
During this period, the Aboriginal nations were generally left to govern themselves internally in accordance with their own political structures and laws. Their complete independence as sovereign nations was nonetheless reduced as the Crown extended its jurisdiction over them, usually without their consent and often in violation of peace and friendship treaties such as the 1664 Two-Row-Wampum Treaty.
In 1776, the Thirteen Colonies declared their independence from Britain. The resulting American Revolutionary War terminated in 1783 with the Treaty of Paris, whereby Britain acknowledged the independence of the United States and agreed upon the present international boundary from the Atlantic Ocean to the Lake of the Woods.
After 1783, British North America was geographically confined to the region north of the international boundary. The Crown needed land for British settlers, especially the United Empire Loyalists who fled to Canada from the United States. For this purpose, it began to negotiate land cession treaties in what is now southern Ontario. As settlement extended west and north, more treaties were negotiated, including the Robinson Huron and Robinson Superior Treaties of 1850.
Further west, Britain and the United States settled their territorial claims by the Convention of 1818 and the Oregon Boundary Treaty of 1846, which together extended the international boundary along the 49th parallel from the Lake of the Woods to the Strait of Georgia.
From 1849 until the creation of the colony of British Columbia in 1858, the Hudson’s Bay Company exercised governmental authority on behalf of the Crown in the areas of the West Coast that were under the Crown’s control. From 1850 to 1854, Governor James Douglas entered into treaties with some of the Aboriginal nations on Vancouver Island for acquisition of some of their lands. These treaties established reserves for these nations and guaranteed their hunting and fishing rights.