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Show REPORT OF TEE COMMISSIONER OF INDIAN AFFAIRS. XXV the surrey made thereof in 1721 under act of 1669, by which said land was granted to said Indians; and in 1798 the general assembly made provision for the purchase of said land on Choptank River, reserving 100 acres to such Indians as desired to remain and live thereon (Colo-nial and State Laws, p. 145). North Carolina.-By the treaty of 1777 withVirginia and Xorth Caro-lina, the Cherokees relinquished all their lands in North Carolina, be-tween the BlneRidgeMountainsandLittle andcatawba Rivera, andalso those between the Blue Ridge and Iron Mountains. Georgia.-By the treaty of 1713 with the British superintendent of Indian airs, the Cherokees ceded to Georgia a tract of country on the Savannah River, north of l3road River, and by the treaty of 1883 the land between the Oconee and Tugaloo Rivers. The remaining colonies by similar treaties and negotiations, secured the relinquishment of the Indian title of occupancy within their re-spective limits, and the Indians finally removed therefrom or were merged in the body politic. Atbr the adoption of the Articles of Confederation, and later the Constitution of the Uuited States, the question naturally arose in reference to the Indian tribes resident within the limits of any State, whether the right of exclusive sovereignty or exclusive pre.emption, formerly vested in the crown, passed by virtue of the Declaration of Independence to the Confederation of States or to the individual State. The honorable Mr. Everett, on the 3d of March, 1827, in a report to Congress on the Georgia controversy embracing this question, stated tbat on the one hand it was contended that the right to the nnoccu-pied lands, and, what was considered the same thing, the landoccupied by the Indians, having originally resided in that government which was common to all the colonies, and having been conquered from that government at the joint expense and efforts of all the colonies, passed to the confederation; on the other hand, it was urged that each State, becoming independent, succeeded within its own limits to all the rights vested in the crown. The difficulty was practically adjusted by the successive acts of ces-sion to the General Government by certain States of their claims to ex-tensive tracts of Western land. The conditions, however, on which these cessions were made, as expressed in the deeds, were not uniform, hut sufficiently so to demonstrate the fact that they severally ceded the soil, as well as jurisdiction, with the exclusive right of the United States to extinguish the Indian title. Georgia.-Georgia was the only State having large claims to such land which did not, either before or shortly after the adoption of the Federal Donstitution, make such a cession; butin 1802 a compromise was effected by which she ceded all her right and title to land west of the present western boundary of the State, the United States in turn giving up all claim, right, and title to the jurisdiction and soil east of said line, as- |