The “honored through” view

Stop the clock in a chosen year and see what had already been promised.

Choose a year. Land that Royce records as ceded on or before that year is drawn in grey. Land recorded as ceded later is drawn in green: under the agreements in force that year, it would still have been held by the nations. As you move the slider past the chosen year, each later cession appears as an outline, so you can see what changed and when.

The choice of years is fixed so the view is not cherry-picked:

• 1783: the end of the Revolutionary War, before any federal treaty.
• 1830: the Indian Removal Act.
• 1851: the first Fort Laramie treaty.
• 1868: the second Fort Laramie treaty.
• 1871: Congress ends treaty-making.
• 1887: the General Allotment Act.

What this view does not do

• It does not judge whether any cession was freely agreed. Many later cessions were negotiated by the nations themselves; many were coerced. The records of each say which.
• It does not show land Royce never mapped (before 1784, after 1894, Alaska and Hawaii).
• It is not a legal claim. A “Legal status today” panel always accompanies it, separating what a treaty said from what courts and Congress have done since.

This view and its legal-status panel are awaiting review by a federal Indian law reviewer. Try it on the map.