As I understand it, within the first years of contact with European, millions of North Americans died from disease, wiping out countless Nations. Treaties were created allowing land to be settled on by Europeans (and reserving land for the First Nations, now know as Reserves). Eventually Canada, USA and Mexico became countries.
Why does it seem like Mexico is different with respect to Reserves? Were there treaties created to allow settlements (and reserves), or where things handled differently?
Oh jeez, mexican here, and thats a really complex question you just asked... yes and no, Im no expert, but please allow me to attempt to give it a shot (or more likely ramble a lot), as I answered in a previous post (https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/8ocjd9/before_the_mexican_cession_what_were_relations/) while dealing with strong and organized indigenous nations like Comancheria, Mexico usually signed treaties or had unofficial dealings to avoid direct confrontations, not always, when dealing with smaller groups like Apaches or Yaquis, the response of the Mexican government was usually not that different from that of the US:
But there's a lot to unpack here, so if you'd allow me a little bit of rambling I have to start from the beginning, or like, the middle I guess:
- The Kingdom of New Spain
So, after the conquest a huge (and I do mean huge) part of the Mexican (from here on out Im going to refer to any political entity ocupying the current territory of Mexico as Mexico) was indigenous, by 1519 something like 20 million indigenous inhabitants were living in Mexico and even after succesive plagues in the 16th century as much as 55% of the population were pure blooded indigenous of diferent ethnicities by the time the Mexican War of Independence kicked off, as /u/dhmontgomery sucintly summarized, (https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/7y9ikc/when_did_mexico_become_a_majority_spanishspeaking/), the rest being predominantly mestizos.
A huge part of the Independence was the abolition of the spanish caste system which barred mestizos and indigenous decendants from services and the possibility of government posts (http://www.memoriapoliticademexico.org/Textos/2ImpDictadura/1822-clasiforigen.html).
- Independent Mexico
Despite this and for a number of reasons the following conservative governments didnt really pay attention to the question of indigenous population (see above links) apart from a minor mention in the 1824 Constitution: "article 49, fraction 11, refer to the faculties of the Congress of the Union to: facilitate comerce between foreign nations, the different states of the Federation and and the indian tribes"", and yes, that indeed is an almost verbatim copy of the US Constitution's article 1.8.3.
- 1857, the French Intervention and Juarez
So, you'd notice I make a bit of a jump here, but for our porpouses the years between 1824 and 1857 can be summarized as: A bunch of wars happen and then Santa Anna screws us over.
For reasons I will not get into, Benito Juarez the "Benemerito of the Americas", assumes presidency after Comonfort renounces to presidency and he as Supreme Judge assumes office, now I cannot stress how important Benito Juarez is to mexican history, sufice to say historians like Paco Ignacio Taibo II have called him "the pivotal point in which Mexico trully emerged as a nation", but for the porpouses of our discussion I will make note of a fact of his birth: He was a Zapotec indian.
Following his victory over conservative forces, the church and the 2nd French Empire (long story), a new Constitution is published in 1857 called... err... the 1857 Constitution (our country literally means "Place of the Mexica", so you know, we are not great with names), and as you might have guessed it, with a Zapotec president, that has attained whats effectively supreme power through the prestige of winning an all out civil war AND repelling an invasion by what was effectively the greatest land power at the time, the rights an status of indigenous people's in Mexico was... completely ignored.
Wait what?, yup, see at the time the mexican state was operating on the western belief that a nation could only be unified by a shared religion (catholic) and a unified ethnic identity.
So, while Juarez was able to work at a local level for example in Oaxaca, fighting as a lawyer in defence of the loxichas or at higher levels by proposing the "Republics of Indians" in 1847, which would've given indigenous people's in the Oaxacan state the right of self-governance (it didnt pass throught the local congress but we'll come back to that) as well as assigning land to indigenous populations as President in: Janos, Paso del Norte, San Carlos, Coyamé, Carrizal, Namiquipa, Guadalupe de Bravos y Repechique, in Chihuahua and Álamos, en Sonora, y Tlaltenango, Sicacalco y Tocatic, in Zacatecas, the reality was that Mexico was operating as a single-ethnicity country (http://www.jornada.unam.mx/2017/03/17/opinion/018a1pol), and recognizing the indigenous people's as a group with distinct necessities wasnt really possible at that moment, as such they remained with "protectorate" status in some instances or simply mexican citizens though the reality is that while this was the legal theory, racism, greed and abuse often reared its ugly head in practice (https://archivos.juridicas.unam.mx/www/bjv/libros/7/3481/9.pdf).
Now that is not to say there wasnt a strong movement to fight against this inequality, as notorious thinker, adventurer, writer, revolutionary, situational rebel, liberal, and etc... Igancio Ramirez "the Nigromante" so accurately says: "Amongst the many ilusions with wich we feed ourselves, not the least of them is the deadly notion that we are a homogeneous nation. Let us raise this thin veil of mixed race that stretches everywhere and we will find a hundred nations that we will in vain attempt to confuse as a single one", but for now, we indigenous right will remain divided between local efforts and the wars against Mayas, Yaquis and Soques and Apaches to the North, something that was accentuated when Dictator Porfirio Diaz took power and began a systematic fight against indigenous populations.
- The 1917 Constitution (see what I mean by names), Articles 2 and 27
So, you'd notice I make a bit of a jump here, but for our porpouses the years between 1857 and 1917 can be summarized as: A bunch of wars happen and then Victoriano Huerta screws us over... also the Revolution.
So an important thing that happens here is that the Revolution redirects the narrative of Mexican history to direct it to frame it as a history of mestizos with our direct predecesors being the indigenous peoples, you can see this influence in things like the art of Diego Rivera who begins embelishing the indigenous "traits" of mexican culture.
Acompanying this shift in political perception came Article 27 of the 1917 Constitution: "recognizes ownership of rancherias, towns, congregations, tribes, etc... as subjects with a right to their land and delcares null all past diligences by which they might have been privated fully or partially of their land must be restituted... and so their lands are declared inalienable and un-seizable".
"What?", well it basically means that a distinct community (such as lets say, an indigenous population or "tribe") has a right to their land and property and no one, not even the state itself may take it from them, what this meant legally, and most important, in practice is that often a "tribe" could claim legal ownership of their land even when it was taken from them, this wasnt always respected mind you... but it did gave legal basis for the creation of semi-independent communities capable of something close to autonomy at the municipal level, expecially in states with high levels of indigenous populations like Yucatan, Chiapas, Oaxaca, Sonora, etc...
Which leads to Article 2 (http://www.ordenjuridico.gob.mx/Constitucion/articulos/2.pdf), Article 2 not only recognizes the indigenous peoples as an integral part of the mexican identity and composition, it also effectively gives them the right at limited autonomy at the municipal level (below state, above town/city, kind of like a county), and effectively allows them to select their own leaders and be ruled by laws based on their own customs, a recently famous example of this is Cheran a municipality in the state of Michoacan which delcared autonomy based on this article after they decided local law enforcement was inefficient/corrupt (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cher%C3%A1n).
And here I dont want to give a false idea, this is often more the ideal than the reality, we a lot of the same vices and problems we've had ever since the conquest, still, an ideal it is, and grafted into the very basis of our laws at long last it was.
Wow, you're terrible at editing and summarizing
So in summary: Mexico is a nation that mayorly identifies as "mestizo" (spanish+indigenous, both, not one or the other), which had the same attitude as the US towards indigenous populations, but had liberals with a very similar attitude to this problem as abolitionists had towards slavery, reserves are not implemented and indigenous populations are recognized as mexican citizens in theory but racism keeps being a factor in practice, in the 20th century efforts are made to recognize the historical debt Mexico has towards the indigenous peoples though a lot of work is still ahead of us.
I hope this answer of mine is useful to you, not overly complicated, and not overly biased due to my own nationality.
You have indeed answered my question. Gracias, from your fellow North American (Canada).