On its eastern extremity near the head-waters of the French Broad River, immediately at the foot of the main Blue Ridge Mountains, had been located, for a number of years prior to the treaty, a settlement of about fifty families of whites, who by its ratification became occupants of the public domain of the United States, but who were outside the territorial jurisdiction of any State. These settlers petitioned Congress to retrocede the tract of country upon which they resided to South Carolina, in order that they might be brought within the protection of the laws of that State.[122] A resolution was reported in the House of Representatives, from the committee to whom the subject had been referred, favoring such a course,[123] but Congress took no effective action on the subject, and when the State boundaries came to be finally adjusted in that region the tract in question was found to be within the limits of North Carolina. _Yellow Creek settlement._--After that portion of the boundary of the country ceded by the treaty of 1798 which extended along the foot of Cumberland Mountain until it intersected "Campbell's Line" had been surveyed, complaint was made by certain settlers on Yellow Creek that by the action of the surveyors in not prolonging the line to its true point of termination, their homes had been left within the Indian country. Thereupon the Secretary of War instructed Agent Meigs[124] to go in person and examine the line as surveyed with a view to ascertaining the truth concerning the complaints. It was ascertained that the "point" of Campbell's Line was not on Cumberland Mountain proper, but on the ridge immediately east thereof, known as Poor Valley Ridge. This ridge is nearly as lofty as the main range, and Colonel Campbell, in approaching it from the east, had mistaken it for that range and established his terminal point accordingly. The surveyors under the treaty of 1798, assuming the correctness of Colonel Campbell's survey, had made the line of their survey close thereon. By such action the Indian boundary in that locality was extended 332 poles further to the east than would have been the case had the true reading of the treaty been followed. A number of families of settlers on Yellow Creek, together with a tract of about 2,500 acres of land, were thus unfortunately left within the Indian country. All efforts of Agent Meigs to secure a relinquishment of this strip of territory from the Indians were, however, ineffectual.[125] [Footnote 105: United States Statutes at Large, Vol. I, p. 496.] [Footnote 106: United States Statutes at Large, Vol. VII, p. 62.] [Footnote 107: This address and remonstrance will be found in full in American State Papers, Indian Affairs, Vol. I, page 625.] [Footnote 108: December 20, 1797.] [Footnote 109: American State Papers, Indian Affairs, Vol. I, p. 629.] [Footnote 110: American State Papers, Indian Affairs, Vol. I, p. 631.]