ABSTRACT
The Treaty of Paris in 1783 granted the thirteen colonies the independence they sought from England. The treaty not only ended the war, but it also ceded all British land claims south of the Great Lakes. The legal theory under which English colonization proceeded was one that held that all of the land belonged to the Crown. Most of the colonists of the seventeenth century who actually came from came from urban backgrounds. The rapid population growth of the colonial era was also spawned by very high birth rates. With abundant land and shortages of labor, there was a strong inducement for raising large families. The most obvious of those who did not immigrate, of course, were the native people whom Christopher Columbus had earlier misnamed "los Indios," or the Indians. The treatment of the Seminoes was in concurrence with the federal government's general policy that was enunciated in the 1820s.
