Another and most perplexing question has been the adjustment of the conflicting claims of different tribes of Indians to the same territory. In the earlier days of the Federal period, when the entire country west of the Alleghanies was occupied or controlled by numerous contiguous tribes, whose methods of subsistence involved more or less of nomadic habit, and who possessed large tracts of country then of no greater value than merely to supply the immediate physical wants of the hunter and fisherman, it was not essential to such tribes that a careful line of demarkation should define the limits of their respective territorial claims and jurisdiction. When, however, by reason of treaty negotiations with the United States, with a view to the sale to the latter of a specific area of territory within clearly-defined boundaries, it became essential for the tribe with whom the treaty was being negotiated to make assertion and exhibit satisfactory proof of its possessory title to the country it proposed to sell, much controversy often arose with other adjoining tribes, who claimed all or a portion of the proposed cession. These conflicting claims were sometimes based upon ancient and immemorial occupancy, sometimes upon early or more recent conquest, and sometimes upon a sort of wholesale squatter-sovereignty title whereby a whole tribe, in the course of a sudden and perhaps forced migration, would settle down upon an unoccupied portion of the territory of some less numerous tribe, and by sheer intimidation maintain such occupancy. In its various purchases from the Indians, the Government of the United States, in seeking to quiet these conflicting territorial claims, have not unfrequently been compelled to accept from two, and even three, different tribes separate relinquishments of their respective rights, titles, and claims to the same section of country. Under such circumstances it can readily be seen, what difficulties would attend a clear exhibition upon a single map of these various coincident and overlapping strips of territory. The State of Illinois affords an excellent illustration. The conflicting cessions in that State may be briefly enumerated as follows: 1. The cession at the mouth of Chicago River, by treaty of August 3, 1795, was also included within the limits of a subsequent cession made by treaty of August 24, 1816, with the Ottawas, Chippewas, and Pottawatomies. 2. The cession at the mouth of the Illinois River, by treaty of 1795, was overlapped by the Kaskaskia cession of 1803, again by the Sac and Fox cession of 1804, and a third time by the Kickapoo cession of 1819. 3. The cession at "Old Peoria Fort, or village," by treaty of 1795, was also overlapped in like manner with the last preceding one. 4. The cessions of 1795 at Fort Massac and at Great Salt Spring are within the subsequent cession by the Kaskaskias of 1803.