182 CHEROKEE NATION OF INDIANS. 
Status of certain territory.—In this connection it is pertinent to remark 
that the State of North Carolina claimed for her southern boundary 
the thirty-fifth degree of north latitude. 
The line of this parallel was, however, at that time supposed to run 
about 12 miles to the north of what was subsequently ascertained to 
be its true location. 
Between this supposed line of 35° north latitude and the northern- 
most boundary of Georgia, as settled upon by a convention between 
that State and South Carolina in 1787, there intervened a tract of 
country of about 12 miles in width, from north to south, and extending 
from east to west, from the top of the main ridge of mountains which 
divides the eastern from the western waters to the Mississippi River. 
This tract remained, as was supposed, within the chartered limits of 
South Carolina, and in the year 1787 was ceded by that State to the 
United States, subject to the Indian right of occupancy. When the 
Indian title to the country therein described was ceded to the United 
States by the treaty of 1795 with the Cherokees, the eastern portion of 
this 12-mile tract fell within the limits of such cession. 
On its eastern extremity near the head-waters of the French Lroad 
River, immediately at the foot of the main Blue Ridge Mountains, had 
been located, for a number of years prior to the treaty, a settlement of 
about fifty families of whites, who by its ratification became occupants of 
the public domain of the United States, but who were outside the terri- 
torial jurisdiction of any State. These settlers petitioned Congress to 
retrocede the tract of country upon which they resided to South Carolina, 
in order that they might be brought within the protection of the laws of 
that State.! A resolution was reported in the House of Representatives, 
from the committee to whom the subject had been referred, favoring 
such a course,’ but Congress took no effective action on the subject, 
and when the State boundaries came to be finally adjusted in that re- 


and files of the plat and field notes in question. There is much difficulty in ascer- 
taining the exact point of departure of ‘‘ Meigs Line” from Great Iron Mountains. 
In the report of the Tennessee and North Carolina boundary commissioners in 1821 
it is stated to be 314 miles by the course of the mountain ridge in a general south- 
westerly course from the crossing of Cataluche Turnpike ; 94 miles in a similar direc- 
tion from Porter’s Gap; 214 miles in a northeasterly direction from the crossing of 
Equovetley Path, and 334 miles in a like course from the crossing of Tennessee 
River. All of these courses and distances follow the crest of the Great Iron Mount- 
ains. It is stated to the author, by General R. N. Hood, of Knoxville, Tenn., that 
there is a tradition that ‘Meigs Post” was found some years since about 1} miles 
southwest of Indian Gap. A map of the survey of Qualla Boundary, by M.S. Temple, 
in 1876, shows a portion of the continuation of ‘‘Meigs Line” as passing about 14 
miles east of Quallatown. Surveyor Temple mentions it as running ‘8. 50° E, (for- 
merly 8. 524° E.”) 
‘See memorial of Matthew Patterson and others, dated ‘‘French Broad, 8th Jan- 
uary, 1800,” printed in American State Papers, Public Lands, Vol. I, p. 104. 
* This resolution was reported by Mr. Harper, from the committee to whom it was 
referred, to the House of Representatives, April 7, 1800, andis printed in American 
State Papers, Public Lands, Vol. I, p. 103. 
