Page:Messages and Letters of William Henry Harrison Vol. 1.djvu/74

36  , January 19, 1802 American State Papers; Public Lands, I, 123

The circumstances mentioned in this letter I have considered of sufficient importance to be communicated to the President. The court established at this place, under the authority of the State of Virginia, in the year 1780, (as I have before done myself the honor to inform you) assumed to themselves the right of granting lands to every applicant. Having exercised this power for some time [1780-1788] without opposition, they began to conclude that their right over the land was supreme, and that they could with as much propriety grant to themselves as to others. Accordingly, an arrangement was made, by which the whole country to which the Indian title was supposed to be extinguished, was divided between the members of the court [Francis Bosseron, Louis Edeline, Pierre Gameline, Pierre Querez]: and orders to that effect entered on their journal, each member absenting himself from the court on the day that the order was to be made in his favor, so that it might appear to be the act of his fellows only. The tract thus disposed of extends on the Wabash twenty-four leagues from La Pointe Coupée to the mouth of White river, and forty leagues into the country west, and thirty east from the Wabash, excluding only the land immediately surrounding this town, which had before been granted to the amount of twenty or thirty thousand acres.

The authors of this ridiculous transaction soon found that no advantage could be derived from it, as they could find no purchasers, and I believe that the idea of holding any part of the land was by the greater part of them abandoned a few years ago; however, the claim was discovered, and a part of it purchased by some of those speculators who infest our country, and through these people, a number of others in different parts of the United States have become concerned, some of whom are actually preparing to make settlements on the land the ensuing spring. Indeed, I should not be surprised to see five hundred families settling under these titles in the course of a year. The price at which the land is sold