The treaty of 1828 guaranteed to the Cherokees seven millions of acres of land, and then declared in the following words: "In addition to the seven millions of acres thus provided for, and bounded, the United States further guarantee to the Cherokee Nation a perpetual outlet west, and a free and unmolested use of all the country lying west of the western boundary of the above described limits, and as far west as the sovereignty of the United States and their right of soil extend." This guarantee was reaffirmed in similar language by the treaties of 1833 and 1835, and the guaranty contained in the treaty of 1835 was reaffirmed by the treaty of 1846. The question, therefore, to be determined was what constituted the extreme western limit of the sovereignty of the United States in that vicinity. The colony or province of Louisiana had originally belonged to France. In 1762 it was transferred to Spain, but was by Spain retroceded to France by the treaty of 1800. In 1803 the Emperor Napoleon, fearing a war with England and the consequent occupation of the territory by that power, ceded it to the United States, but the boundaries of the cession were very indefinite and, according to Chief Justice Marshall, were couched in terms of "studied ambiguity." It seems to have been consistently claimed by the United States up to the treaty of 1819 with Spain that the western boundary of the Louisiana purchase extended to the Rio Grande River. The better opinion seemed also to be that it followed up the Rio Grande from the mouth to the mouth of the Pecos, and thence north. By that treaty, however, all dispute concerning boundaries was adjusted and the undefined boundary between Louisiana and Mexico was settled as following up the course of the Sabine River to the Red River; thence by the course of that river to the one hundredth meridian, thence north to the Arkansas River and following the course of that river to the forty-second parallel, and thence west to the Pacific Ocean. By many the position was taken that this treaty was a _nudum pactum_, and Henry Clay, when it was under consideration in the Senate, introduced a resolution into the House of Representatives declaring that Texas, being a part of the territory of the United States, could not be ceded by the treaty making power to a foreign country, and that the act was not only unauthorized by the Constitution but was void for another reason, viz, that this cession to Spain was in direct conflict with clear and positive stipulations made by us in the treaty with France as to the disposition of the whole territory. Under this theory of the invalidity of the treaty of 1819 the Cherokees claimed the extension of their boundary west of the one hundredth meridian. But, assuming the insufficiency of this claim, they still fortified their title upon another proposition. Mexico succeeded, by the consummation of her independence, to all the territorial rights of Spain in this region.