On October 7, 1763, Great Britain’s Board of Trade under King George III issued the Proclamation of 1763. An attempt to control settlement and trade on the western frontier of the British American colonies, the proclamation essentially closed the Ohio Valley for settlement by the British American colonists by defining the area west of the Appalachian Mountains as Indian land and declaring that the Native Americans were under the protection of the king. No settlement or land purchases were to be conducted there without the Crown’s approval. The proclamation also defined four new colonies that Great Britain had won from France and Spain in the just-concluded Seven Years’ War (1756–63, known in its American manifestation as the French and Indian War). These colonies were Quebec (which in fact had long been settled), East and West Florida, and the island of Grenada.