America Was Never Empty. So Who Had the Right to Sell It?

Matt Baker's Timeline of US History tells the story of a country assembled through wars, purchases, treaties, and the steady admission of new states. France sells Louisiana. Britain relinquishes Oregon. Mexico surrenders California. The United States grows until its familiar outline emerges.

It is an appealing way to explain American history. It also risks teaching a profound misunderstanding about how the country acquired its land.

European governments repeatedly transferred claims over territories they did not fully control, inhabited by nations that had never agreed to be sold.

The distinction matters because purchasing a colonial claim was not the same as acquiring Indigenous land rights. Establishing an international boundary was not the same as obtaining the consent of everyone living inside it.

Baker does recognize that problem. He acknowledges Indigenous civilizations, broken treaties, the Trail of Tears, the Sioux wars, and the forced relocation of the Navajo. He even points out that the Louisiana Purchase was inhabited overwhelmingly by Indigenous peoples.

His difficulty is therefore more interesting than simple historical neglect.

The facts he acknowledges do not receive equal weight in the larger story. European territorial claims organize the timeline, while Indigenous sovereignty largely appears as something progressively displaced by American expansion.

The original treaties and court decisions expose a history more complicated—and more disturbing—than the familiar sequence of territorial acquisitions.

1. Napoleon Sold Louisiana. But What Did He Actually Own?

In 1803, Napoleon Bonaparte sold Louisiana to the United States for $15 million.

The transaction covered approximately 828,000 square miles, or 530 million acres. That works out to roughly three cents per acre.

American negotiators Robert Livingston and James Monroe had initially sought control of New Orleans. Napoleon's offer dramatically expanded the transaction, effectively doubling the territory claimed by the United States. The agreement was signed on April 30, 1803.

It is routinely celebrated as one of history's great real-estate bargains.

But calling it a land purchase conceals what was actually being transferred.

Much of Louisiana was occupied by Indigenous nations that had never surrendered their lands to France.

The United States purchased France's imperial claims and associated rights. It did not obtain the consent of every Indigenous nation living throughout the territory.

The treaty itself makes that distinction impossible to ignore.

Article VI of the Louisiana Purchase Treaty required the United States to honor existing agreements between Spain and Indigenous nations until different arrangements were reached by mutual consent.

Why would the new purchaser need to recognize those agreements if the land and all rights over it had already been transferred without qualification?

Because the European transaction did not erase Indigenous interests and obligations. The treaty recognized that the United States was inheriting relationships with nations whose rights could not simply be treated as nonexistent.

This does not mean France possessed no transferable rights. Under the imperial system, it possessed claims recognized between European powers.

That is precisely the distinction.

France could transfer its colonial position to the United States. It could not, merely by signing a treaty with Washington, establish that every Indigenous community had consented to surrender its land.

The United States bought an imperial claim. The process of securing Indigenous land rights remained largely unfinished.

Once those two events are compressed into a single territorial acquisition, the subsequent history of expansion begins to look more orderly than it was.

2. The Supreme Court Explained How the System Worked

The underlying legal doctrine was not obscure.

In 1823, the Supreme Court decided Johnson v. M'Intosh, a dispute involving competing land titles in Illinois.

One claim originated from purchases made directly from the Piankeshaw people. The competing claim came through the United States.

The Court favored the federal grant.

Chief Justice John Marshall explained that European discovery had established an exclusive right for the discovering power, subsequently inherited by the United States, to acquire Indigenous land.

Indigenous peoples retained recognized rights of occupancy, but the Court denied them the unrestricted ability to sell their lands to whomever they chose.

In effect, the colonial power claimed ultimate title while Indigenous nations retained a subordinate right to occupy their homelands.

The implications were enormous.

The government could recognize that Indigenous peoples inhabited and possessed land while simultaneously asserting that they lacked the full rights normally associated with independent ownership.

In its reasoning, the Court acknowledged that Native peoples' sovereignty had been diminished by a principle established through European discovery.

This was not a neutral description of an empty continent becoming populated.

It was a legal framework through which European powers and their American successor asserted superior territorial rights over societies already living there.

The decision also exposes a weakness in treating historical transfers between European governments as equivalent to ordinary property transactions.

If an Indigenous nation could not freely sell its own territory to an outside buyer, while a European government could transfer sweeping claims over the same territory, the system was not treating those two parties as equals.

American territorial expansion was supported by a legal order that privileged colonial claims over Indigenous freedom to dispose of land.

That is a central part of how the United States acquired its modern geography.

And it deserves considerably more attention than another change of color on a map.

3. The United States Promised Not to Take Indigenous Land Without Consent

There is an even sharper contradiction in the founding documents.

In 1787, Congress adopted the Northwest Ordinance, establishing a government for the Northwest Territory and a process for creating new states.

Baker correctly explains how Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, and Wisconsin eventually emerged from this region.

But the ordinance contained another provision.

Article III promised that Indigenous lands and property would not be taken without consent, except under the document's stated provisions concerning lawful wars authorized by Congress.

It also committed the government to good faith in its treatment of Indigenous peoples.

The same document therefore established two obligations: a framework for American statehood and a commitment to respect Indigenous property.

A complete account of the Northwest Territory must explain how those obligations interacted.

The region was not simply a vacant federal estate waiting to be divided into five states.

Its development required further dealings with the Indigenous nations whose lands fell within the territory.

That raises a question the ordinary statehood timeline cannot answer:

How did American authorities turn territories inhabited by sovereign Indigenous communities into land available for settlement and admission as states?

Sometimes the process involved negotiated agreements.

Sometimes it involved military defeat.

Sometimes it involved arrangements whose legitimacy was bitterly disputed by the Indigenous peoples supposedly represented.

The distinction between those circumstances matters more than the administrative sequence in which states appeared.

4. Twenty Cherokee Signatures Became the Basis for Removing Thousands

The Cherokee removal provides an unusually clear example of how a formally ratified treaty could be used against the wishes of most of the people it affected.

Baker mentions the Trail of Tears, explaining that Cherokee communities were forcibly relocated westward.

But the political mechanism behind the removal deserves scrutiny.

In December 1835, American officials reached the Treaty of New Echota with a minority Cherokee faction.

According to the National Park Service, only 300 to 500 Cherokee people attended the gathering. None were elected officials of the Cherokee Nation.

Twenty people signed the agreement.

The treaty surrendered Cherokee territory east of the Mississippi in exchange for $5 million and land in Indian Territory.

More than 15,000 Cherokee people protested.

Nevertheless, the United States Senate ratified the treaty in May 1836 by a margin of just one vote.

In May 1838, federal troops and state militias began forcibly removing Cherokee communities from their homelands.

The National Park Service records that more than 16,000 Cherokee people were evicted during the removal process.

Consider what happened.

An agreement opposed by the overwhelming majority of the affected nation became the federal government's legal basis for removing that nation's people.

Its ratification did not establish that the Cherokee population had freely agreed.

Nor does this example prove that every treaty with an Indigenous nation was fraudulent or coercive. Treaties must be assessed individually, including the authority of their signatories and the circumstances surrounding their negotiation.

But New Echota demonstrates why the mere existence of a treaty is insufficient evidence of meaningful consent.

A map can identify the land as transferred.

It cannot establish whether the transfer was legitimate.

That requires examining who signed, who objected, who enforced the agreement, and what happened to the people who refused to leave.

5. Britain and America Divided Oregon Before Indigenous Nations Ceded Their Lands

The 1846 Oregon Treaty is another revealing case.

Baker describes how the United States and Great Britain divided Oregon Country along the 49th parallel, helping establish America's Pacific territory.

That account captures the diplomatic settlement between the two powers.

But it is not the complete history of acquiring land in Oregon Country.

The treaty resolved competing British and American territorial claims. Its provisions addressed their boundary, navigation rights, and certain British commercial property interests.

It did not settle all Indigenous land rights within the region.

A separate agreement makes the distinction concrete.

On June 9, 1855—nine years after Britain and the United States divided Oregon Country—American officials signed a treaty with the Yakama and other Indigenous bands in present-day Washington.

The treaty's first article addressed the transfer of Indigenous rights and interests in an extensive area of land.

This was a different transaction, involving different parties and a different set of rights.

The sequence matters.

In 1846, Britain and the United States settled their competing imperial claims.

In 1855, the United States entered an agreement seeking the transfer of Indigenous interests in a portion of the territory.

Those events should not be mistaken for one another.

A diplomatic agreement could establish America's position against Britain without completing its acquisition of Indigenous land rights.

The same distinction complicates the story of the Mexican-American War.

The 1848 Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo transferred approximately 55 percent of Mexico's territory to the United States following Mexico's military defeat.

Yet Article XI expressly acknowledged that extensive portions of the transferred region remained occupied by Indigenous peoples, whom the treaty placed under American control.

The agreement established new international boundaries. It did not mean that Indigenous sovereignty and property questions had suddenly disappeared.

Across these acquisitions, a recurring pattern emerges.

European or American governments established territorial boundaries through treaties with one another.

The rights of Indigenous inhabitants then became questions addressed through separate negotiations, federal policies, military campaigns, and, at times, forced removal.

A conventional territorial map combines those processes into a single national outline.

The legal documents show why they must be distinguished.

6. Hawaii Was Not Simply Annexed. Its Government Was Overthrown.

Hawaii offers perhaps the clearest example of why the identity of the people authorizing a territorial transfer matters.

Baker acknowledges that American settlers participated in the overthrow of the Hawaiian kingdom in 1893 and that the United States annexed the islands in 1898.

That acknowledgment is important.

The documentary record, however, establishes a more direct American government role than the brief description conveys.

In 1993, Congress adopted Public Law 103-150, commonly called the Apology Resolution.

The resolution acknowledged that American diplomatic and military representatives participated in the overthrow of Hawaii's independent government.

It identified U.S. Minister John L. Stevens and the deployment of American naval forces as part of the events surrounding the removal of Queen Liliʻuokalani.

Congress also acknowledged that approximately 1.8 million acres of Hawaiian crown, government, and public land were subsequently transferred to the United States without the consent or compensation of the Native Hawaiian people or their sovereign government.

That is a substantial fact to leave outside a history of territorial acquisition.

The United States had previously recognized Hawaiian independence and maintained diplomatic relations with the kingdom.

The overthrow destroyed that government.

Five years later, annexation proceeded through a congressional joint resolution.

The 1993 congressional resolution acknowledged the illegal overthrow and apologized for American participation in depriving Native Hawaiians of self-determination. It did not, however, settle claims against the United States.

This is more than a disagreement over how much detail belongs in an educational timeline.

Hawaii demonstrates that the government ultimately transferring territory to the United States might itself have emerged from the displacement of an earlier sovereign government.

The question is therefore not merely when Hawaii became American.

It is whose political authority was displaced, who participated in that displacement, and whose consent was absent from the subsequent transfer.

A chronology that records only the overthrow and annexation dates cannot fully explain that chain of events.

7. Some of the Timeline's Dates Are Wrong

The broader criticism concerns historical interpretation.

But the video also contains several factual errors that can be checked directly.

Cahokia's population

Baker places Cahokia's population of approximately 20,000 as far back as AD 600.

UNESCO places the settlement's estimated peak population of 10,000–20,000 between AD 1050 and 1150.

That is a difference of several centuries.

The underlying point—that sophisticated Indigenous settlements existed long before European colonization—is correct. The date attached to the population estimate is not supported by UNESCO's archaeological chronology.

Texas and the Mexican-American War

Baker describes Texas as an independent republic for 12 years before joining the United States and connects its admission to the year the Mexican-American War ended.

The actual chronology is straightforward.

Texas declared independence on March 2, 1836.

It entered the United States on December 29, 1845, approximately nine years and ten months later.

The Mexican-American War ended in 1848.

These are different events separated by several years. The Texas State Library's annexation records and the State Department's historical account establish the relevant dates.

The unification of Hawaii

Baker dates the unification of all the Hawaiian Islands to 1795.

That year marked important victories in Kamehameha I's campaign, including his conquest of Oʻahu.

But Kauaʻi did not come under his authority until 1810, completing the political unification of the islands.

Both the National Park Service and the State Department distinguish those events.

Spanish California

The video dates Spanish settlement of California to 1767.

The Library of Congress places the beginning of the Spanish settlement program in Alta California in 1769, when soldiers and Franciscan missionaries established a presidio and mission at San Diego.

The distinction is relevant because the account is identifying the beginning of permanent Spanish settlement in the region that became the American state.

None of these errors independently overturns the video's larger historical narrative.

Together, however, they undermine confidence in a product whose primary purpose is to organize historical events accurately by date.

A timeline has less room for chronological mistakes than an ordinary narrative.

Its dates are not supporting decoration.

They are the product.

8. The Problem Is Not That Indigenous History Is Missing

A serious criticism must confront the strongest defense available to Baker.

He begins with Indigenous North America.

He explicitly acknowledges that his representation of Indigenous societies is simplified.

He identifies 36 groups on the map and highlights four in the historical timeline.

He discusses the Trail of Tears, broken promises to the Haudenosaunee, Sioux resistance, and the forced relocation of the Navajo.

He also explains that most inhabitants of Louisiana were Indigenous when the United States purchased France's territorial claims.

These details prevent a fair critic from accusing him of simply pretending Indigenous peoples did not exist.

The problem is subtler.

The narrative acknowledges Indigenous dispossession without consistently separating it from the legal and diplomatic processes by which European powers transferred territorial claims.

A color-coded map can make the distinction difficult to see.

France occupies one color. Britain another. Spain and Mexico have their own. The expanding United States acquires those regions until its familiar boundaries emerge.

Indigenous peoples occupy the map too, but their sovereignty and land rights operate on a different scale from the European territorial claims used to organize the whole presentation.

That design reflects a recognizable historical approach: showing the succession of internationally recognized colonial and national claims over the territory that eventually became the United States.

There is nothing inherently dishonest about choosing that subject.

But a map organized around those claims must distinguish them from actual possession and Indigenous ownership if it is to explain territorial acquisition rather than merely territorial assertion.

The difference changes the reader's understanding of what happened.

A French claim did not mean an Indigenous nation had surrendered its land.

An American purchase did not automatically terminate the nation's rights.

A treaty between Washington and London did not make every Indigenous community inside the resulting boundary a willing participant.

And a treaty signed by a minority faction did not necessarily represent the freely expressed decision of an entire people.

These are not marginal details.

They explain how the United States transformed colonial claims into the territorial system represented on modern maps.

Baker promotes a redesigned historical poster alongside the video. That establishes a commercial connection between his educational presentation and the product being sold, but it provides no evidence that commercial interests caused the omissions or factual errors identified here.

The stronger criticism concerns the historical explanation itself.

Educational compression is unavoidable.

Conflating different kinds of rights and transactions is not.

The Verdict: A Country Is More Than Its Borders

The United States did acquire Louisiana from France in 1803.

It did establish a boundary with Britain in Oregon in 1846.

Mexico did surrender enormous territories following the Mexican-American War.

Hawaii did become part of the United States in 1898.

Those events are historical facts.

The mistake is allowing their sequence to stand as a sufficient account of how America acquired the land beneath its modern borders.

The primary documents establish a more demanding history.

The Louisiana Purchase Treaty preserved obligations toward Indigenous nations. The Supreme Court articulated a legal doctrine subordinating Indigenous land rights to colonial claims. The Northwest Ordinance promised respect for Indigenous property. The Treaty of New Echota demonstrated how contested consent could become the basis for forced removal. The Oregon settlement preceded further treaties with Indigenous nations. Hawaii's annexation followed the overthrow of a sovereign government with documented American involvement.

These findings do not establish that every American territorial acquisition was identical, unlawful, or accomplished without negotiation.

They establish that the processes were different, that legal title often remained contested or incomplete, and that the people inhabiting the territory cannot be treated as incidental to its acquisition.

The United States was not assembled merely by buying land from governments that owned it. It expanded through a changing system of imperial claims, international agreements, Indigenous treaties, political coercion, settlement, and military power.

Matt Baker's timeline makes American territorial growth easy to follow.

Its central limitation is that the clarity of the national map comes at the expense of distinctions essential to understanding the history beneath it.

A state border tells us which government ultimately prevailed.

It does not, by itself, tell us who owned the land, who consented to its transfer, or what happened to those who resisted.

Those are the questions that turn a chronology of American expansion into a history of how the country was actually made.

References

1. Matt Baker, “Timeline of US History,” UsefulCharts, YouTube, 2025.
   Watch the original video
   The original work under examination; establishes Baker's treatment of colonial claims, Indigenous history, territorial acquisitions, and statehood.

2. “Louisiana Purchase Treaty,” April 30, 1803, U.S. National Archives.
   Read the original treaty and historical explanation
   Article VI establishes that the United States assumed obligations under existing agreements with Indigenous nations rather than simply extinguishing their rights through the purchase.

3. “History and the Census: The 1803 Louisiana Purchase,” Jason G. Gauthier, U.S. Census Bureau, April 1, 2023.
   Read the historical analysis
   Provides the purchase price, territorial area, diplomatic circumstances, and evidence of the region's predominantly Indigenous population.

4. “Johnson v. M'Intosh,” U.S. Supreme Court, March 10, 1823, reproduced by Cornell Law School.
   Read the Supreme Court decision
   Establishes the legal distinction between Indigenous occupancy rights and the superior territorial claims asserted under the doctrine of discovery.

5. “Northwest Ordinance,” July 13, 1787, U.S. National Archives.
   Read the original ordinance
   Article III records the federal government's commitment to respect Indigenous property and obtain consent, subject to specified exceptions concerning lawful war.

6. “What Happened on the Trail of Tears?” National Park Service, updated 2025.
   Read the historical account
   Documents the Treaty of New Echota's disputed representation, its 20 signatories, mass Cherokee opposition, and subsequent forced removal.

7. “Treaty with the Yakama, 1855,” Washington State Governor's Office of Indian Affairs, original treaty dated June 9, 1855.
   Read the treaty
   Demonstrates that Indigenous land-rights agreements continued after Britain and the United States had already settled their competing claims to Oregon Country.

8. “Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo,” February 2, 1848, U.S. National Archives.
   Read the original treaty
   Establishes Mexico's territorial cessions and shows that the agreement explicitly recognized Indigenous populations within the transferred territories.

9. “Public Law 103-150,” U.S. Congress, November 23, 1993, Government Publishing Office.
   Read the congressional Apology Resolution
   Documents Congress's acknowledgment of American participation in Hawaii's overthrow, the transfer of public lands, and the deprivation of Native Hawaiian self-determination; the resolution does not settle legal claims.

10. “Cahokia Mounds State Historic Site,” UNESCO World Heritage Centre.
    Read UNESCO's archaeological description
    Places Cahokia's estimated peak population of 10,000–20,000 between AD 1050 and 1150, contradicting the video's placement of that population around AD 600.

11. “Annexation Process: 1836–1845,” Texas State Library and Archives Commission.
    Read the annexation chronology
    Establishes Texas's independence in 1836 and admission to the United States in 1845, correcting the video's chronology.

12. “Hawaii,” Office of the Historian, U.S. Department of State.
    Read the diplomatic history
    Identifies 1810 as the completion of Kamehameha I's unification of the Hawaiian Islands and documents American recognition of Hawaiian independence.

13. “Spanish California,” Library of Congress, Early California History: An Overview.
    Read the historical account
    Dates the beginning of permanent Spanish settlement in Alta California to the founding of San Diego's presidio and mission in 1769.