Forced displacement

At first, the departure of Native Americans from their lands was a discreet process. The missions from New France (northeast of Canada) to Florida confused the Indians, who did not notice the abuses of the colonists by handcuffing cloths, cooking sticks, weapons, knives and other useful and ready-to-use items. Coastal areas and river valleys soon became forbidden territories for indigenous peoples because the early colonizers were attracted to fertile, well-irrigated lands close to waterways.

Many small southern coastal tribes fled into the interior because of the demand for Indian slaves in the English colonies of America and the sugar plantations of the Antilles. The Indian groups attacked each other because they had to compete for decreasing territories and resources. They often joined the colonizers because they were seduced by payment in commercial goods. In 1704, James Moore, who was the British governor of Carolina, arrived in Florida, which was under Spanish control, along with a group of settlers and a thousand creek, apalachic and yuchis natives. The Apalaches, the Timucua and the Calusas, who had already been subdued by the Spanish occupation, were virtually eliminated and returned with more than 6,000 captives destined for the slave market. To the north, Indian tribes also faced conflicts due to pressure from European colonization and competition for the thriving leather trade. The Iroquois League, led by the Dutch and the English, dispersed the Hurons and forced the Ojibwas to settle in the Western Great Lakes, where the Sioux were forced to intern in the plains.

As the United States won the War of Independence (1775-1783), the Iroquois lost their homeland and fled to British Canada. When the Crown bought all the land in Canada without respecting the rights of the Aborigines, Indian territories also disappeared.

In 1787, the United States Congress passed the Northwest Ordinance, which stated that "Indians will never have to lose their land and property without their consent". However, the constant presence of the Indians was considered an obstacle to white colonization, and those beautiful words were soon empty of meaning. From time to time, small groups of natives were expelled or exterminated by gangs from North and South Carolina to California. Initially, the official measure was to remove them from areas intended for white settlers and to place them in small areas of unfavourable land. In 1830, President Andrew Jackson took a further path when he enacted the Aboriginal Expulsion Act, which forced Aborigines to move west of Mississippi and give the east to the whites. Although in theory the Indians had the ability to reside in their own “Indian territory”, in reality the expansion of the White to the west was carried out without interference.

The displacement trauma was controlled through intense military activities. For example, New Mexico volunteers attacked its territory in the 1950s under the leadership of Colonel Kit Carson. After the last battle at the sacred site of Chelly Canyon in 1864, the Navajo surrendered. To reach Fort Summer, New Mexico, more than 8,000 people, mostly on foot, had to travel 480 kilometers of mountain and desert. Many people died on the way. After several decades of intense suffering, the survivors were allowed to return to a reserve located within their original territories.