Tomahawk Rights and Corn Titles 105 



The pilgrimage which began in a little English village in 

 the first half of the seventeenth century, which went from 

 there to Massachusetts, to New Jersey, to Virginia, to Ken- 

 tucky, to Indiana, went on to the new country nearer to the 

 Mississippi. The place they chose to stop there was Sangamon, 

 meaning "the land where there is plenty to eat/' 



The saga of the Lincolns was repeated by scores of other 

 families in that restless eighteenth century. All these took 

 advantage of the unwritten law of the frontier which per- 

 mitted a man to blaze his name, the date and a number of 

 acres on a tree in the wilderness establishing thereby a "toma- 

 hawk right" to the land. When he had cleared a piece and 

 sown a crop on it, he held "corn title." There was not a court 

 in the colonies that would have decided against the legality 

 of such a claim. 



Not only were Americans of several generations on the 

 move, the colonies were drawing an increasing immigration 

 from Europe. Most of these came to Penn's Quaker Colony. 

 There were Germans and Moravians from the Palatinate, and 

 Presbyterians from the plantations of Scotch lowlanders whom 

 the Stuarts had encouraged to remove to northern Ireland. 

 These two racial streams poured into Philadelphia and took 

 the road west. A traveler of the time describes meeting them 

 on the trails in the early Spring, while the snow still lingered 

 on the eastern slopes. 



A man driving a cow or two; perhaps leading a pig by a 

 "sugan" of twisted straw, as he had gone many times to the 

 fair in Antrim. . . . Three packhorses moving slowly under 

 unwieldy loads: on the first a woman nursing a baby under her 

 fawny shawl, and with her cooking pots tied to her saddle; on 

 the second a sack of corn and the farm tools; on the third, 

 wooden creels, one packed with bedding and clothing and in 

 the other, two small children, like pigeons in a crate . . . 



For forty years and more the tide of Americans, Germans, 



