Messages and Letters of William Henry Harrison/Harrison to Secretary of State Regarding land frauds
Harrison to Secretary of State
Vincennes, 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.[1]
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 enables any body to become a purchaser; one thousand acres being frequently given for an indifferent horse or a rifle gun. And as a formal deed is made reciting the grant of the court (made as it is pretended under the authority of the State of Virginia) many ignorant persons have been induced to part with their little all to obtain this ideal property, and they will no doubt endeavor to strengthen their claim, as soon as they have discovered the deception, by an actual settlement. The extent of these speculations was unknown to me until lately. I am now informed that a number of persons are in the habit of repairing to this place, where they purchase two or three hundred thousand acres of this claim, for which they get a deed properly authenticated and recorded, and then disperse themselves over the United States, to cheat the ignorant and credulous. In some measure, to check this practice, I have forbidden the recorder and prothonotary of this county from recording or authenticating any of these papers; being determined that the official seals of the Territory shall not be prostituted to a purpose so base as that of assisting an infamous fraud.
I have the honor to be, with the most perfect respect.
Your Obedient Servant,
William Henry Harrison
- ↑ For a good discussion of this see George R. Wilson "Land Surveys of Early Indiana" in Vol. XII. Indiana Magazine of History.