Indian barrier state

The Indian barrier state was a British proposal to establish a Native American buffer state in the portion of the Great Lakes region of North America. It was never created. The idea was to create it west of the Appalachian Mountains, bounded by the Ohio and Mississippi rivers and the Great Lakes. The concept of establishing such a state, first conceived in the late 1750s, was part of a long-term plan to reconcile the Indian tribes to British presence and diminish hostilities between the tribes and the British Army following its victory in the French and Indian War in 1763.^[1][2]

After the region was assigned to the United States in the 1783 Treaty of Paris ending the American Revolutionary War, British officials pursued efforts to organize the various tribes within it into a sort of Confederation, that would form the basis of an Indian state, independent of the United States, and under their tutelage. The goal was to protect the British fur trade ventures in the region and to block American expansion westward.^[3][4]

Among the plan's most ardent proponents were Mohawk leader Joseph Brant and Lieutenant Governor of Upper Canada John Graves Simcoe.^[5] In 1814 the British government abandoned efforts to bring such a state into being with the signing of the Treaty of Ghent with the United States.