198 The Winning of the West 



the Cherokees, by which the latter agreed to sur- 

 render their claims to a small portion of this coun- 

 try, though as a matter of fact before the treaty 

 was signed white settlers had crowded beyond the 

 limits allowed them. These two treaties, in the first 

 of which one set of tribes surrendered a small por- 

 tion of land, while in the second an entirely dif- 

 ferent confederacy surrendered a larger tract, 

 which, however, included part of the first cession, 

 are sufficient to show the absolute confusion of the 

 Indian land titles. 



But in 1771, one of the new-comers, 11 who was a 

 practical surveyor, ran out the Virginia boundary 

 line some distance to the westward, and discovered 

 that the Watauga settlement came within the limits 

 of North Carolina. Hitherto the settlers had sup- 

 posed that they themselves were governed by the 

 Virginian law, and that their rights as against the 

 Indians were guaranteed by the Virginian govern- 

 ment; but this discovery threw them back upon their 

 own resources. They suddenly found themselves 

 obliged to organize a civil government, under which 

 they themselves should live, and at the same time 

 to enter into a treaty on their own account with the 

 neighboring Indians, to whom the land they were 

 on apparently belonged. 



The first need was even more pressing than the 

 second. North Carolina was always a turbulent 



treaties acknowledged the rights of the Cherokees to the 

 major part of these northwestern hunting-grounds. 

 11 Anthony Bledsoe. 



