itely claimed or actually held by the
tribes. Even in respect of the territory of many of the tribes of the
eastern United States, much of whose land was ceded by actual treaty
with the Government, doubt exists. The fixation of the boundary points,
when these are specifically mentioned in the treaty, as was the rule, is
often extremely difficult, owing to the frequent changes of geographic
names and the consequent disagreement of present with ancient maps.
Moreover, when the Indian's claim to his land had been admitted by
Government, and the latter sought to acquire a title through voluntary
cession by actual purchase, land assumed a value to the Indian never
attaching to it before.

Under these circumstances, either under plea of immemorial occupancy or
of possession by right of conquest, the land was often claimed, and the
claims urged with more or less plausibility by several tribes, sometimes
of the same linguistic family, sometimes of different families.

It was often found by the Government to be utterly impracticable to
decide between conflicting claims, and not infrequently the only way out
of the difficulty lay in admitting the claim of both parties, and in
paying for the land twice or thrice. It was customary for a number of
different tribes to take part in such treaties, and not infrequently
several linguistic families were represented. It was the rule for each
tribe, through its representatives, to cede its share of a certain
territory, the natural boundaries of which as a whole are usually
recorded with sufficient accuracy. The main purpose of the Government in
treaty-making being to obtain possession of the land, comparatively
little attention was bestowed to defining the exact areas occupied by
the several tribes taking part in a treaty, except in so far as the
matter was pressed upon attention by disputing claimants. Hence the
territory claimed by each tribe taking part in the treaty is rarely
described, and occasionally not all the tribes interested in the
proposed cession are even mentioned categorically. The latter statement
applies more particularly to the territory west of the Mississippi, the
data for determining ownership to which is much less precise, and the
doubt and confusion respecting tribal boundary lines correspondingly
greater than in the country east of that river. Under the above
circumstances, it will be readily understood that to determine tribal
boundaries within accurately drawn li