ch had most effect upon the history of the Northwest, and
which largely gave it its peculiar trend, was the work of New
Englanders. There was already a considerable population in New England;
but the rugged farmers with their swarming families had to fill up large
waste spaces in Maine and in Northern New Hampshire and Vermont, and
there was a very marked movement among them towards New York, and
especially into the Mohawk valley, all west of which was yet a
wilderness. In consequence, during the years immediately succeeding the
close of the Revolutionary War, the New England emigrants made their
homes in those stretches of wilderness which were nearby, and did not
appear on the western border. But there had always been enterprising
individuals among them desirous of seeking a more fertile soil in the
far west or south, and even before the Revolution some of these men
ventured to Louisiana itself, to pick out a good country in which to
form a colony. After the close of the war the fame of the lands along
the Ohio was spread abroad; and the men who wished to form companies for
the purposes of adventurous settlement began to turn their eyes thither.

Land Claims of the States.

The first question to decide was the ownership of the wished-for
country. This decision had to be made in Congress by agreement among the
representatives of the different States. Seven States--Massachusetts,
Connecticut, New York, Virginia, Georgia, and both Carolinas--claimed
portions of the western lands. New York's claim was based with entire
solemnity on the ground that she was the heir of the Iroquois tribes,
and therefore inherited all the wide regions overrun by their terrible
war-bands. The other six States based their claims on various charters,
which in reality conferred rights not one whit more substantial.

These different claims were not of a kind to which any outside power
would have paid heed. Their usefulness came in when the States bargained
among themselves. In the bargaining, both among the claimant States, and
between the claimant and the non-claimant States, the charter titles
were treated as of importance, and substantial concessions were exacted
in return for their surrender. But their value was really inchoate until
the land was reduced to possession by some act of the States or the
Nation.

Virginia and North Carolina.

At the close of the Revolutionary War there existed wide differences
between the various Sta