33 8 The Winning of the West 



Georgia, and both Carolinas claimed portions of 

 the western lands. New York's claim was based 

 with entire solemnity on the ground that she was 

 the heir of the Iroquois tribes, and therefore inher 

 ited all the wide regions overrun by their terrible 

 war-bands. The other six States based their claims 

 on various charters, which in reality conferred 

 rights not one whit more substantial. 



These different claims were not of a kind to 

 which any outside power would have paid heed. 

 Their usefulness came in when the States bargained 

 among themselves. In the bargaining, both among 

 the claimant States, and between the claimant and 

 the non-claimant States, the charter titles were treat 

 ed as of importance, and substantial concessions 

 were exacted in return for their surrender. But 

 their value was really inchoate until the land was 

 reduced to possession by some act of the States or 

 the Nation. 



At the close of the Revolutionary War there ex 

 isted wide differences between the various States as 

 to the actual ownership and possession of the lands 

 they claimed. Virginia and North Carolina were 

 the only two who had reduced to some kind of occu 

 pation a large part of the territory to which they as 

 serted title. Their backwoodsmen had settled in 

 the lands so that they already held a certain popula 

 tion. Moreover, these same backwoodsmen, organ 

 ized as part of the militia of the parent States, had 

 made good their claim by successful warfare. The 

 laws of the two States were executed by State offi- 



