While we know our northern friends may not feel it, in the South, Spring is
here. So we thought we'd share a few of our gardening sites appropriate
for this time of the year. Along with gardening, there's grilling, and getting
ready to diet so that you can fit back into that bathing suit this summer!
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:
