Treaty of Lancaster

The Treaty of Lancaster was a treaty concluded between the Six Nations (Iroquois) and the colonies of Virginia and Maryland. Negotiations began at Lancaster, Pennsylvania, on June 25, and ended on July 4, 1744.

The negotiations were conducted in the old courthouse, which stood in the center of Lancaster at the time. The Soldiers and Sailors Monument, built in 1874 to commemorate the U.S. Civil War, now stands on the site of the Treaty in Penn Square.

Lt. Governor Alexander Spotswood had arranged the Treaty of Albany with the Six Nations in 1722. It renewed the Covenant Chain and agreed to recognize the Blue Ridge Mountains as the demarcation between the Virginia Colony and the Iroquois.

Colonial governments were unable to prevent white settlers from moving beyond the Blue Ridge and into the Shenandoah Valley in the 1730s. When the Iroquois objected, they were told that the agreed demarcation was to prevent their trespassing east of the Blue Ridge, but not to prevent the English from expanding west of them. In 1743 the Iroquois skirmished with some Valley settlers. The Iroquois were on the verge of declaring total war on the Virginia Colony when Governor Gooch paid them the sum of 100 pounds sterling for any settled land in the Valley which they claimed. The following year at the Treaty of Lancaster, the Iroquois sold all their remaining claim to the Shenandoah Valley for 200 pounds in gold. At the same time, it was an attempt to make peace between the Iroquois and the southern Catawba.

Even so, a difference in interpretation remained. The Virginians believed that the Iroquois had relinquished to the Crown any claim they had on all the lands within the 1609 Chartered boundaries of Virginia. They considered these to extend to the Pacific, or at least up to the Ohio River. The Iroquois understood that they had ceded only their lands up to the Ohio watershed; in other words, only the Shenandoah Valley east of the Allegheny Mountains.

This difference was partly resolved at the 1752 Treaty of Logstown, where the Iroquois recognised English rights southeast of the Ohio. Nevertheless, the Cherokee, Shawnee and other nations continued to claim by possession large portions of the area beyond the Allegheny Ridge. At the 1758 Treaty of Easton with the Shawnee ending "Braddock's War" (a portion of the French and Indian Wars), the colonies agreed to settle no further west of the Alleghenies (the Eastern Divide). The Royal Proclamation of 1763 confirmed this territory as Indian land.

By the Treaty of Fort Stanwix in 1768, the Iroquois finally sold all their remaining claims between the Ohio and Tennessee Rivers. The Shawnee relinquished their claim on that area only following their defeat in Dunmore's War in 1774. The Cherokee also ceded their claims in this region (encompassing most of present-day Kentucky and part of West Virginia) in the Treaty of Hard Labour (1768), the Treaty of Lochaber (1770), and the Henderson Purchase (1775).