modern maps and the scanning of more than fifty volumes failed to show
its location or to give even the slightest clue to it. A somewhat
extended correspondence with numerous persons in Tennessee, including
the veteran annalist, Ramsey, also failed to secure the desired
information. It was not until months of time had been consumed and
probable sources of information had been almost completely exhausted
that, through the persevering inquiries of Hon. John M. Lea, of
Nashville, Tenn., in conjunction with the present writer's own
investigations, the line was satisfactorily identified as being the
boundary line mentioned in 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.