In 1712 France made a grant to Antoine de Crozat of the exclusive right to the trade of this region. As this grant gives the limits of this vast region as they were understood by France, a portion of it is here introduced.

We have by these presents signed with our hand, authorized, and do authorize the said Sieur Crozat to carry on exclusively the trade in all the territories by us possessed, and bounded by New Mexico and by those of the English in Carolina, all the establishments, ports, harbors, rivers, and especially the port and harbor of Dauphin Island, formerly called Massacre Island, the river St. Louis, formerly called the Mississippi, from the seashore to the Illinois, together with the river St. Philip, formerly called the Missouries River, and the St. Jerome, formerly called the Wabash [the Ohio], with all the countries, territories, lakes in the land, and the rivers emptying directly or indirectly into that part of the river St. Louis. All the said territories, countries, rivers, streams, and islands we will to be and remain comprised under the name of the government of Louisiana, which shall be dependent on the General Government of New France and remain subordinate to it, and we will, moreover, that all the territories which we possess on this side of the Illinois be united, as far as need be, to the General Government of New France and form a part thereof, reserving to ourself, nevertheless, to increase, if we judge proper, the extent of the government of the said country of Louisiana.

From this it appears that Louisiana was regarded by France as comprising the drainage basin of the Mississippi at least as far north as the mouth of the Illinois, with those of all its branches which enter it below this point, including the Missouri, but excluding that portion in the southwest claimed by Spain. It is, moreover, certain that the area now comprised in Washington, Oregon, and Idaho was

not included.

Crozat surrendered this grant in 1717.

On November 3, 1762, France by a secret treaty ceded this region. to Spain, defining it only as the Province of Louisiana, but Spain did not take possession until several years later. By the treaty of peace of 1763 between Great Britain, France, and Spain, the western boundary of the British possessions in the New World was placed in the center of Mississippi River, thus reducing the area of Louisiana by the portion east of the river. By these two treaties France disposed of her possessions in North America, dividing them between Great Britain and Spain. The limit set between the British and Spanish possessions was given as the Mississippi, the Iberville, and Lakes Maurepas and Pontchartrain. (See fig. 11.)

Iberville River is now called Bayou Manchac. In the early days there was a connected waterway (now closed) through this river between the Mississippi and the Gulf of Mexico. The island thus formed was called the island of New Orleans.

Great Britain then subdivided her newly acquired province, Florida. The area south of latitude 31° (changed in 1764 to a parallel through the mouth of Yazoo River, 32° 28' approximately) and west of

Apalachicola River she called West Florida; the region east thereof and south of the present north boundary of Florida received the name East Florida. For the next 16 years these boundaries and names remained undisturbed. In 1783, by the treaty of peace with the United States at the close of the Revolution, Great Britain reduced the area of West Florida by the cession of that portion north of the thirty-first parallel to the United States. In the same year she gave East Florida and what remained of West Florida to Spain, and in Spain's possession they remained until they were ceded to the United States in 1819.38

Meantime, in 1800, by the secret treaty of San Ildefonso, Spain promised to return Louisiana to France. In the language of the treaty, she pledged herself to return to France the

Province of Louisiana with the same extent it now has in the hands of Spain, and that it had when France possessed it, and such as it should be after the treaty subsequently entered into between Spain and other States.

Immediately after this transfer became known (on November 30, 1802), measures were set on foot by President Jefferson for obtaining free access to the sea by way of Mississippi River. Circumstances favored this negotiation. Bonaparte was at that time in almost daily expectation of a declaration of war by Great Britain, in which case the first act of the latter would be to seize the mouth of the Mississippi, and with it the Province of Louisiana. Under these circumstances Bonaparte offered to sell the Province to the United States, and the offer was promptly accepted. The consideration named was 60,000,000 francs and the assumption by the United States of the "French spoliation claims," which were estimated to amount to $3,750,000. It was strongly urged by the opponents of this purchase that it was contrary to the Constitution of the United States.38a

39

The treaty of cession, which bears date April 30, 1803, describes the territory only as being the same as ceded by Spain to France by the treaty of San Ildefonso, from which the description given was quoted. From this it appears that the territory sold comprised that part of the drainage basin of the Mississippi which lies west of the course of the river, except the parts that were then held by Spain. (See fig. 1.) The want of precise definition of limits in the treaty was not objected to by the American commissioners, as they probably foresaw that this very indefiniteness might prove of service to the United States in future negotiations with other powers. In fact, the claim of the United States to the area now comprised in Oregon, Washington, and Idaho in the negotiations with Great Britain regarding the northwestern boundary was ostensibly based not only

28 Malloy, W. M., op. cit., vol. 1, p. 506.

38a Brown, E. S., The constitutional history of the Louisiana Purchase: California Univ. Pub. History, vol. 10, Berkeley, 1920.

Malloy, W. M., op. cit., vol. 1, p. 508.

upon prior occupation and upon purchase from Spain, but also upon the alleged fact that this area formed part of the Louisiana Purchase. That this claim was baseless is shown not only by what has been already detailed regarding the limits of the purchase but also by the direct testimony of the French plenipotentiary, M. Barbé Marbois. Some 20 years after the purchase he published a book on Louisiana, in which he detailed at some length the negotiations that preceded the purchase and, referring to this question, said: "The shores of the western ocean were certainly not comprised in the cession, but already the United States are established there."

There is also in Marbois's book a map of the country between the Mississippi and the Pacific, on which the western extent of Louisiana is indicated by a line drawn on the one hundred and tenth meridian, which is not far from the western limit of the drainage basin of the Mississippi in Wyoming and Montana. That part of the country now comprised in Oregon, Washington, and Idaho, which, it has been claimed, formed part of the purchase, bears the following legend: "Territories and countries occupied by the United States, following the treaty of cession of Louisiana."

From this it appears that although the United States certainly did not purchase Oregon as a part of Louisiana, it is no less certain that that great area west of the Rocky Mountains fell into its hands as a direct consequence of the Louisiana Purchase.

The treaty of 1783 with Great Britain describes the northern boundary of the United States in part as follows: From the northwesternmost point of the Lake of the Woods "on a due west course to the River Mississippi." The fact that such a line could not intersect the Mississippi proper at any point (see Pl. VII) gave rise to many and serious disputes, which were not settled until after the date of the Louisiana Purchase. This clause of the treaty has been understood by some geographers as placing the United States and British boundary line on the Lake of the Woods parallel for some 400 miles west from the lake to the point where it intersects the Missouri-Mississippi drainage basin, which in 1783 belonged to Spain, thus including the southern part of the basin of Red River as part of the United States territory.

Other geographers who have given the subject careful study would limit the possessions of the United States in the northwest as defined by the treaty of 1783 by Mississippi River and a line due north from its source (Lake Itasca)1o to an intersection with the Lake of the Woods parallel. (See p. 27.)

See Baker, J. H., Minnesota Hist. Coll., vol. 6, pt. 1, 1887; also Brower, J. V., idem, TOL 7, 1893. Lake Itasca is generally referred to as the source of the Mississippi, but there is a creek about 6 miles in length which empties into the southwestern part of the lake, whose source is more than 90 feet above the lake.

Still others consider the Red River basin south of the forty-ninth parallel to be a part of the Louisiana Purchase. The Red River basin was not a part of La Salle's original claim, but it appears to have been actually occupied by the French earlier than 1762. In the Encyclopaedia Britannica (11th ed., vol. 5, pp. 157-158) it is stated that La Vérendrye, a French Canadian, was the first white man of record to explore the country from the site of Winnipeg westward to the Rocky Mountains. (See Pl. II.)

The treaty of 1763 between Great Britain, France, and Spain limited Great Britain's jurisdiction on the northwest by Mississippi River, as will be seen from the following quotation from Article VII:

In order to re-establish peace on solid and durable foundations, and to remove for ever all subject of dispute with regard to the limits of the British and French territories on the continent of America; it is agreed, that, for the future, the confines between the dominions of his Britannic Majesty, and those of his most Christian Majesty, in that part of the world, shall be fixed irrevocably by a line drawn along the middle of the River Mississippi, from its source to the River Iberville.

When this treaty was made Great Britain apparently knew nothing of the secret treaty of the previous year whereby France had ceded the Louisiana territory to Spain. It is evident, however, that Great Britain intended to relinquish all claim to jurisdiction over the area west of the Mississippi. In 1763, and for many years thereafter, the Mississippi was believed to rise considerably north of its actual known source. On the Mitchell map (Pl. III, in pocket) the source was said to be at about the " 50th degree of latitude." Even if the area assigned to France did not extend as far north as latitude 50° it apparently included all that part of the Red River drainage basin west of the actual source of the Mississippi.

The British act of 1774 extended the Province of Quebec to include the area west of Pennsylvania north of the Ohio and east of the Mississippi. The boundaries were more definitely described in the commission issued to the governor in December of the same year, in part as follows:

and along the bank of the said river [Ohio] westward to the banks of the Mississippi, and northward along the eastern bank of the said river to the southern boundary of the territory granted to the Merchant Adventurers of England trading to Hudson's Bay.

The Canadian General Government and the Province of Ontario have made extensive researches concerning the western boundary of Ontario, and the reports give an excellent historical review of the French, Spanish, and English claims to the country about the Lake of the Woods, including the Red River and Mississippi River drainage basins, from the first exploration down to 1818 and later. The