Page:Henry Adams' History of the United States Vol. 1.djvu/316

1802. to the United States government all right and title to the territory which was afterward to become the States of Alabama and Mississippi. This immense region, shut from the Gulf of Mexico by the Spaniards, who owned every river-mouth, was inhabited by powerful Indian tribes, of whom the Georgians stood in terror. The Creeks and Cherokees, Choctaws and Chickasaws, owned the land, and were wards of the United States government. No one could say what was the value of Georgia's title, for it depended on her power to dispossess the Indians; but however good the title might be, the State would have been fortunate to make it a free gift to any authority strong enough to deal with the Creeks and Cherokees alone. In the year 1795, ignoring the claims of the national government, the Georgia Legislature sold its rights over twenty million acres of Indian land to four land-companies for the gross sum of five hundred thousand dollars. With one exception, every member of the Legislature appeared to have a pecuniary interest in the transaction; yet no one could say with certainty that the title was worth more than a half a million dollars, or indeed was worth anything to the purchasers, unless backed by the power of the United States government, which was not yet the case. Nevertheless, the people of Georgia, like the people of Massachusetts and Pennsylvania, being at the moment in the fever of land-speculation, partly because they thought the land too cheap, partly because they believed their representatives