present names but also the various names by which they have from time to
time been known since the discovery of America, giving in each case the
date and the authority therefor.


INDIAN BOUNDARIES.

The most difficult and laborious feature of the work is that involved
under the first of these five subdivisions. The ordinary reader in
following the treaty provisions, in which the boundaries of the various
cessions are so specifically and minutely laid down, would anticipate
but little difficulty in tracing those boundaries upon the modern map.
In this he would find himself sadly at fault. In nearly all of the
treaties concluded half a century or more ago, wherein cessions of land
were made, occur the names of boundary points which are not to be found
on any modern map, and which have never been known to people of the
present generation living in the vicinity.

In many of the older treaties this is the case with a large proportion
of the boundary points mentioned. The identification and exact location
of these points thus becomes at once a source of much laborious
research. Not unfrequently weeks and even months of time have been
consumed, thousands of old maps and many volumes of books examined, and
a voluminous correspondence conducted with local historical societies or
old settlers, in the effort to ascertain the location of a single
boundary point.

To illustrate this difficulty, the case of "Hawkins' line" may be cited,
a boundary line mentioned in the cession by the Cherokees by treaty of
October 2, 1798. An examination of more than four thousand old and