254 CESSIONS OF LAND BY INDIAN TRIBES. 
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 asser- 
tion 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 con- 
flicting claims were sometimes based upon ancient and immemorial occu- 
pancy, 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 ter1itory 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 circum- 
stances it can readily be seen what difficulties would attend a clear ex- 
hibition upon a single map of these various coincident and overlapping 
strips of territory. The State of Illinois affords an excellent illustration. 
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