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 assertion 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 conflicting claims were sometimes based upon ancient and
immemorial occupancy, 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 territory 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
circumstances it can readily be seen, what difficulties would attend a
clear exhibition upon a single map of these various coincident and
overlapping strips of territory. The State of Illinois affords an
excellent illustration. The conflicting cessions in that State may be