TheSix Nations land cessions were a series of land cessions by theHaudenosaunee andLenape which ceded large amounts of land, including both recently conquered territories acquired from otherindigenous peoples in theBeaver Wars, and ancestral lands to theThirteen Colonies and theUnited States. The land ceded covered, partially or in the entire, theU.S. states ofNew York,Pennsylvania,Maryland,Virginia,West Virginia,Kentucky,Ohio,Tennessee andNorth Carolina. They were bordered to the west by theAlgonquian lands in theOhio Country,Cherokee lands to the south, andMuscogee andChoctaw lands to the southeast.

The land cessions were accomplished through a series of purchases and treaties negotiated between the Haudenosaunee and theProvince of New York (and after theAmerican Revolution, theUnited States government) between 1682 and 1797. In theNanfan Treaty of 1701, the Haudenosaunee had ceded their lands north and west of theOhio River to the Thirteen Colonies, which were in part obtained from the Beaver Wars in the late 17th century. During the period ofIndian removal in the early 19th century by the U.S. government, a majority of theOneida, one of the tribes which made up the Haudenosaunee, migrated to the state ofWisconsin. Other Haudenosaunee migrated toOntario orOklahoma. As of the 21st century, the Haudenosaunee live in 20 settlements and 8reservations in New York, Wisconsin, Oklahoma, Ontario andQuebec.

Before the period ofEuropean colonization, the ancestral territory of theHaudenosaunee, a confederation of fiveindigenous tribes, formed the territory of what is nowUpstate New York. TheLenape were spread out in theHudson andDelaware River valleys along theeastern seaboard of North America. During aperiod of violent conflict between the Haudenosaunee and a confederation ofAlgonquian andWyandot tribes who were allied with theFrench, the Haudenosaunee were able to acquire lands through conquest which extended as far as theMississippi River to the west and theTennessee River to the south. The Lenape, under pressure from European colonial settlements, migrated to the Midwest along theOhio River and eventually settled along theWabash River. In 1701, the Haudenosaunee signed the "Deed from the Five Nations to the King, of their Beaver Hunting Ground", more commonly known as theNanfan Treaty, with thecolonial governor of theProvince of New York,John Nanfan. The treaty came about during positive relations between theEnglish Crown and the Haudenosaunee, and ceded large amounts of recently lost territory to colonial New York; no attempt was made to settle the newly ceded territories, as in addition to being populated by hostile Algonquian peoples, the French refused to recognize the treaty.^{[citation needed]}

Between 1682 and 1684,Quaker writer and settlerWilliam Penn acquired as many as ten individual deeds from the Lenape to territory incolonial Pennsylvania, which formed present-dayChester,Philadelphia, andBucks counties. These lands were acquired under theCovenant Chain, a series of treaties signed between theThirteen Colonies and the Haudenosaunee. According to legend, in 1682 Penn signed a treaty under an elm tree with the Lenape known as theTreaty of Shackamaxon. In 1722, theLieutenant Governor ofVirginia,Alexander Spotswood, signed theTreaty of Albany with the Haudenosaunee.^[1] The treaty renewed the Covenant Chain and agreed to recognize theBlue Ridge Mountains as the demarcation between colonial Virginia and the territory of the Haudenosaunee. The same year, theTuscarora joined the confederation of the Haudenosaunee, transforming it into the "Six Nations".^{[citation needed]}

Variouscolonial governments proved unable to prevent white settlers from moving beyond theBlue Ridge Mountains and settling in theShenandoah Valley in the 1730s. When the Haudenosaunee objected to encroachment from settlers, they were informed that the agreed demarcation was to prevent them from trespassing east of the Blue Ridge Mountains, and not to prevent colonists from expanding westward. In December 1742, the Haudenosaunee skirmished with some white settlers in the Shenandoah Valley at theBattle of Galudoghson; tensions worsened to the point of an outbreak of war with Virginian settlers whenSir William Gooch, thecolonial governor of Virginia, agreed to pay the Haudenosaunee 100pounds sterling for any settled territory in the Shenandoah Valley which they claimed belong to them. The following year, in the Treaty of Lancaster, the Haudenosaunee sold their remaining claims in the Shenandoah Valley for 200 pounds sterling in gold and 200 pounds sterling worth of goods.^[2]

The treaty also allowed for the Haudenosaunee to make peace with theCatawba, whom they had been engaged in intermittent conflict for the past decades.^[3] It also was interpreted differently by the Haudenosaunee and the Virginia Colony; with the Virginians believing that the Haudenosaunee had ceded all claims which lay inside the 1609 chartered boundaries of colonial Virginia. The Virginians considered these claims to theoretically extend to thePacific, or at least up to the Ohio River. On the other hand, the Haudenosaunee understood the treaty to mean that they had only ceded their territory up to the Shenandoah Valley east of theAllegheny Mountains.^[4] The negotiations were conducted in theLancaster courthouse, now occupied by theSoldiers and Sailors Monument, built to commemorate theUnion after theAmerican Civil War.^[5]

This difference was partly resolved at theTreaty of Logstown in 1752, where the Haudenosaunee recognized the rights of colonists southeast of the Ohio River. Nevertheless, theCherokee, theShawnee, and other tribes continued to claim by possession large portions of the region beyond the Allegheny Ridge. In the 1758Treaty of Easton with the Shawnee endingBraddock's War, the Thirteen Colonies agreed to forbid settlement west of the Alleghenies. TheRoyal Proclamation of 1763, issued by the British Crown in the aftermath ofPontiac's War, confirmed the region as being forbidden to white settlers.^[6] By theTreaty of Fort Stanwix in 1768, the Haudenosaunee sold all their remaining claims between the Ohio and Tennessee Rivers. After the signing of the Nanfan Treaty, small numbers of Haudenosaunee, known as the Seneca-Cayuga, also referred to as the Ohio Seneca or Ohio Cayuga,^[7] continued to live in the Ohio Country, and eventually broke away from the confederation. The derogatory term "Mingo" was applied by some non-Native settlers to these Native peoples.

• Aboriginal title in New York
• Aboriginal title in the Thirteen Colonies
• Aboriginal title in the United States

• Early Treaties with American Indians, University of Nebraska-Lincoln
• Joseph Solomon Walton, 1900, Conrad Weiser and the Indian Policy of Colonial Pennsylvania

• Treaties of Indigenous peoples of North America
• Treaties of the Kingdom of Great Britain
• Iroquois
• Aboriginal title in the United States
• Former Native American populated places in the United States
• Native American history of Pennsylvania
• Former Native American populated places in New York (state)

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