The most difficult and laborious feature of the work is that involved
under the first of these five subdivisions. The ordinary reader in
following the treaty provisions, in which the boundaries of the various
cessions are so specifically and minutely laid down, would anticipate
but little difficulty in tracing those boundaries upon the modern map.
In this he would find himself sadly at fault. In nearly all of the
treaties concluded half a century or more ago, wherein cessions of land
were made, occur the names of boundary points which are not to be found
on any modern map, and which have never been known to people of the
present generation living in the vicinity.
In many of the older treaties this is the case with a large proportion
of the boundary points mentioned. The identification and exact location
of these points thus becomes at once a source of much laborious
research. Not unfrequently weeks and even months of time have been
consumed, thousands of old maps and many volumes of books examined, and
a voluminous correspondence conducted with local historical societies or
old settlers, in the effort to ascertain the location of a single
boundary point.
To illustrate this difficulty, the case of "Hawkins' line" may be cited,
a boundary line mentioned in the cession by the Cherokees by treaty of
October 2, 1798. An examination of more than four thousand old and
modern maps and the scanning of more than fifty volumes failed to show
its location or to give even the slightest clue to it. A somewhat
extended correspondence with numerous persons in Tennessee, including
the veteran annalist, Ramsey, also failed to secure the desired
information. It was not until months of time had been consumed and
probable sources of information had been almost completely exhausted
that, through the persevering inquiries of Hon. John M. Lea, of
Nashville, Tenn., in conjunction with the present writer's own
investigations, the line was satisfactorily identified as being the
boundary line mentioned in the Cherokee treaty of July 2, 1791, and
described as extending from the North Carolina boundary "north to a
point from which a line is to be extended to the river Clinch that shall
pass the Holston at the ridge which divides the waters running into
Little River from those running into the Tennessee."
It gained the title of "Hawkins' line" from the fact that a man named
Hawkins surveyed it.
That this is not an isolated case, and as an illustration of the number
and frequency of changes in local geographical names in this country, it
may be remarked that in twenty treaties concluded by the Federal
Government with the various Indian tribes prior to the year 1800, in an
aggregate of one hundred and twenty objects and places therein recited,
seventy-three of them are wholly ignored in the latest edition of
Colton's Atlas; and this proportion will hold with but little diminution
in the treaties negotiated during the twenty years immediately
succeeding that date.
Another and most perplexing question has been the adjustment of the
conflicting claims of different tribes of Indians to the same territory.
In the earlier days of the Federal period, when the entire country west
of the Alleghanies was occupied or controlled by numerous contiguous
tribes, whose methods of subsistence involved more or less of nomadic
habit, and who possessed large tracts of country then of no greater
value than merely to supply the immediate physical wants of the hunter
and fisherman, it was not essential to such tribes that a careful line
of demarkation should define the limits of their respective territorial
claims and jurisdiction. When, however, by reason of treaty negotiations
with the United States, with a view to the sale to the latter of a
specific area of territory within clearly-defined boundaries, it became
essential for the tribe with whom the treaty was being negotiated to
make assertion and exhibit satisfactory proof of its possessory title to
the country it proposed to sell, much controversy often arose with other
adjoining tribes, who claimed all or a portion of the proposed cession.
These conflicting claims were sometimes based upon ancient and
immemorial occupancy, sometimes upon early or more recent conquest, and
sometimes upon a sort of wholesale squatter-sovereignty title whereby a
whole tribe, in the course of a sudden and perhaps forced migration,
would settle down upon an unoccupied portion of the territory of some
less numerous tribe, and by sheer intimidation maintain such occupancy.
In its various purchases from the Indians, the Government of the United
States, in seeking to quiet these conflicting territorial claims, have
not unfrequently been compelled to accept from two, and even three,
different tribes separate relinquishments of their respective rights,
titles, and claims to the same section of country. Under such
circumstances it can readily be seen, what difficulties would attend a
clear exhibition upon a single map of these various coincident and
overlapping strips of territory. The State of Illinois affords an
excellent illustration. The conflicting cessions in that State may be
briefly enumerated as follows:
1. The cession at the mouth of Chicago River, by treaty of August 3,
1795, was also included within the limits of a subsequent cession made
by treaty of August 24, 1816, with the Ottawas, Chippewas, and
Pottawatomies.
2. The cession at the mouth of the Illinois River, by treaty of 1795,
was overlapped by the Kaskaskia cession of 1803, again by the Sac and
Fox cession of 1804, and a third time by the Kickapoo cession of 1819.
3. The cession at "Old Peoria Fort, or village," by treaty of 1795, was
also overlapped in like manner with the last preceding one.
4. The cessions of 1795 at Fort Massac and at Great Salt Spring are
within the subsequent cession by the Kaskaskias of 1803.
5. The cession of August 13, 1803, by the Kaskaskias, as ratified and
enlarged by the Kaskaskias and Peorias September 25, 1818, overlaps the
several sessions by previous treaty of 1795 at the mouth of the Illinois
River, at Great Salt Spring, at Fort Massac, and at Old Peoria Fort, and
is in turn overlapped by subsequent cessions of July 30, and August 30,
1819, by the Kickapoos and by the Pottawatomie cession of October 20,
1832.
6. The Sac and Fox cession of November 3, 1804 (partly in Missouri and
Wisconsin) overlaps the cessions of 1795 at the mouth of the Illinois
River and at Old Peoria Fort. It is overlapped by two Chippewa, Ottawa,
and Pottawatomie cessions of July 29, 1829, the Winnebago cessions of
August 1, 1829, and September 1, 1832, and by the Chippewa, Ottawa, and
Pottawatomie cession of September 26, 1833.
7. The Piankeshaw cession of December 30, 1805, is overlapped by the
Kickapoo cession of 1819.
8. The Ottawa, Chippewa, and Pottawatomie cession of August 24, 1816,
overlaps the cession of 1795 around Chicago.
9. The cession of October 2, 1818, by the Pottawatomies (partly in
Indiana), is overlapped by the subsequent cession of 1819, by the
Kickapoos.
10. The combined cessions of July 30, and August 30, 1819, by the
Kickapoos (partly in Indiana), overlap the cessions of 1795 at the mouth
of the Illinois River and at Old Fort Peoria; also the Kaskaskia and
Peoria cessions of 1803 and 1818, the Piankeshaw cession of 1805, and
the Pottawatomie cession of October 2, 1818, and are overlapped by the
subsequent Pottawatomie cession of October 20, 1832.
11. Two cessions were made by the Chippewas, Ottawas and Pottawatomies
by treaty of July 29, 1829 (partly located in Wisconsin), one of which
is entirely and the other largely within the limits of the country
previously ceded by the Sacs and Foxes, November 3, 1804.
12. The Winnebago cession of August 1, 1829 (which is partly in
Wisconsin), is also wholly within the limits of the aforesaid Sac and
Fox cession of 1804.
13. Cession by the Winnebagoes September 15, 1832, which is mostly in
the State of Wisconsin and which was also within the limits of the Sac
and Fox cession of 1804.
14. Pottawatomie cession of October 20, 1832, which overlaps the
Kaskaskia and Peoria cession of August 13, 1803, as confirmed and
enlarged September 25, 1818, and also the Kickapoo cession by treaties
of July 30 and August 30, 1819.
From this it will be seen that almost the entire country comprising the
present State of Illinois was the subject of controversy in the matter
of original ownership, and that the United States, in order fully to
extinguish the Indian claim thereto, actually bought it twice, and some
portions of it three times. It is proper, however, to add in this
connection that where the government at the date of a purchase from one
tribe was aware of an existing claim to the same region by another
tribe, it had the effect of diminishing the price paid.