In our own research, we found many universities across the South were funded in their early years through the sale of land gained through treaties with various Native nations. The University of North Carolina, for example, invested heavily in Cherokee and Chickasaw land hundreds of miles away in what is now western Tennessee.
Beginning in 1789, when UNC was chartered and awarded thousands of acres of western lands by state legislators, UNC claimed large swaths of land within the boundaries of these Native nations. But for years, UNC struggled financially and could not profit off of this Indigenous land due to Cherokees’ and Chickasaws’ forceful assertions of territorial sovereignty.
Indeed, UNC operated at a loss nearly every year from 1789 to 1818, as Native leaders worked tirelessly to protect their homelands from U.S. expansion. Whereas UNC administrators claimed these western lands as university property, the Cherokees and Chickasaws who actually lived there rejected such claims.
One Cherokee man named Kenneteag (Little Turkey) explained to North Carolina officials in 1786 that his people’s land “was our own right and property” and “the chief of our independence.” From the founding of the U.S. through the 1810s, Cherokees and Chickasaws convinced the country to recognize their territorial sovereignty over much of the Tennessee and Cumberland valleys—making UNC’s claims to this land meaningless.
All that changed when an 1818 treaty called The Great Chickasaw Cession formalized the seizure of all Chickasaw territory remaining in Tennessee. UNC officials were delighted by this treaty, as they saw it as a golden opportunity for the university to bounce back financially. “This treaty is very important to a great Many Claimants under North Carolina,” rejoiced Trustee Archibald Murphey upon hearing of the 1818 cession. “The University will be made rich by it.”
Murphey’s words proved prophetic, as UNC only survived the financial upheavals of the early 19th century—including multiple panics and national depressions—because they sold Cherokee and Chickasaw land.
From 1818 to 1840, land sales comprised on average 34.6 percent of UNC’s annual budget. This peaked in the fiscal year of 1834-1835, when 94 percent of the university’s budget ($108,923.98—over $3 million in 2020 when adjusted for inflation) came from such land sales. Dispossession thus helped fund the creation of two new professorships and, alongside the exploitation of enslaved laborers, the construction or expansion of three buildings on campus—Gerrard Hall, Old West, and a third floor expansion on Old East.