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Show PRIVATE LAND CLAIMS 109 tion was increased to 1,280 acres, to 2,000 acres, then to a square league of 7,056 arpents, and finally was abandoned altogether except for claims based on settlement only.69 Orleans Territory was divided into two districts with two sets of land commissioners to report on the many thousands of private land claims there. The commissioners' first reports, of 1812 and 1813, show no reluctance to confirm large claims, as the commissioners for Louisiana Territory did in the early days. Claims as large as 45,986 arpents were approved, though the Maison Rouge claim of 218,344 arpents and the Bastrop claim of 773,376 arpents were rejected. Commissioners of the western district well stated the advisability of treating claimants generously "to tranquillize the minds of a people newly engrafted into the Union, by quieting them as early as possible in their just possessions. . . ." The many questions that had been raised about the validity of the claims and the long delays in arriving at decisions had created "a state of suspense" that was compounded by the inconvenience, difficulty, and expense experienced by the claimants in procuring the necessary testimony to establish their rights. The board permitted as much indulgence as the law allowed by permitting witnesses to be examined both outside the district or within it but not in the presence of the commissioners, even though testimony so obtained was frequently conflicting and not always reliable. It urged upon Congress the confirmation of claims resting on a written petition with a regular survey sanctioned by a duly authorized officer, without proof of established occupancy, since this had been sufficient to procure title under the Spanish Government. The board admitted that Spanish authorities had rejected some claims of this sort and had reduced the 69 Harry L. Coles, Jr., "Applicability of the Public Land System to Louisiana," Mississippi Valley Historical Review, XIII (June 1956), 39-58 and id., "The Confirmation of Foreign Land Titles in Louisiana," Louisiana Historical Quarterly, XXXVIII (October 1955), 1-22, have both been most helpful. number of arpents asked in others, but added that only rarely had the requests been denied when they did not exceed 800 arpents. A second recommendation was that claims which could be shown by oral testimony to have been settled and cultivated before December 20, 1803, should be confirmed even though there was no written permission to settle from the Spanish authorities.70 Congress partly approved the recommendations of the western commissioners in an Act of April 12, 1814, authorizing confirmation of incomplete concessions, warrants or orders of survey issued, located or surveyed before December 30, 1803, which did not exceed a square league and donation claims that had not been inhabited on that date. Preemptions of 160 acres were allowed other inhabitants who had cultivated their tracts.71 Easier standards for confirmation of titles may have quieted feelings in Louisiana for a time but the process of securing confirmation through the Boards of Land Commissioners, the Commissioner of the Land Office, and Congress caused tedious and exasperating delays in issuing patents and led the Louisiana State Assembly on February 23, 1820, to memorialize Congress on the subject. The assembly complained that the "considerable mass of private titles" which still remained to be decided, involved "consequences imminently injurious to the great landed interests of this State." It "arrests the hand of improvement, and weakens the energies of enterprise and industry, which flourish in their natural vigor on a soil where the title thereof is indisputable . . . [it] leaves waste and unproductive a large portion of the lands of this State; ... it opens the avenues of fraud and speculation by which the fountains of real estates become corrupted, converting the soil. . . into a medium of unprincipled traffic, reducing its appropriate value, and withering the active powers of the community. ..." Because of the delay in survey- 70 American State Papers, Public Lands, II, 744 ff. 71 3 Stat. 121. |