Leading industries on Indian lands include jewelry making and wood processing. Some tribes lease mineral rights, tax mineral production, operate businesses, and offer tourist attractions on their reservations. But most reservations lack well-developed economies. Indians who live on reservations have one of the highest unemployment rates and one of the lowest average incomes of any U.S. group. Living conditions on the reservations are generally substandard.
Some Indian lands have modern homes, but inadequate housing is a widespread problem.
Reservation Indians also have the least education and the poorest health among all U.S. groups. In 1638, Puritan settlers at the New Haven Colony set aside land for the Quinnipiac Indians to use for planting. In 1758, the legislature of the New Jersey Colony became the first government body to establish an Indian reservation in what is now the United States. The legislature set aside land for the Delaware Indian tribe at what is now Indian Mills, southeast of Camden. During the early and mid-1800's, advancing white settlers claimed more and more Indian lands.