131 North Carolina Colonial Records, ix, 825-6, 982. MS. Copy in Minutes of Council, Public Record Office, Colonial Office, 5:355. 132 Haywood: Civil and Political History of Tennessee (1823), 40. 133 Butler: History of Kentucky (1836), p. lxvii, note. Also Draper MSS., 2 CC 34. 134 Wharton: Plain Facts (1781), 9. 135 Alvord: The Illinois-Wabash Land Company Manuscript. 136 A copy of the opinion, bearing this date, is in the Henderson papers, Draper collection, Wisconsin Historical Society. 137 Extended investigation establishes beyond question that Judge Henderson was proceeding in strict accordance with law in seeking to acquire title by purchase from the Cherokees instead of applying to the royal government for a grant. When Virginia's sea-to-sea charter was abrogated in 1624, Virginia became a royal province and the settlement of boundaries a royal prerogative. Of the three presumed Indian claimants to the trans-Alleghany region, viz., the Iroquois, Shawanoes, and Cherokees, the Iroquois by defeating the Shawanoes and their confederates in the Ohio Valley at the battle of Sandy Island in 1672 acquired title, as understood by the Indians, to this region. By the treaties of Lancaster (1744), Loggstown (1752), and Fort Stanwix (1768), the claims of the Shawanoes and the Iroquois to the trans-Alleghany territory were ceded to the crown. While the Shawanoes and the Cherokees acquiesced in the Treaty of Fort Stanwix, the crown fully acknowledged the claim of the Cherokees to the trans-Alleghany region; and by the treaties of Hard Labor (1768) and Lochaber (1770) confirmed them in possession of this region to the west of the boundary line (See Chapter XII). The sovereignty of England extended over this territory, the right of eminent domain being vested in the crown. Henderson was legally justified in disregarding the royal proclamation of 1763 which was largely in the nature of a temporary expedient, and in purchasing the title to the trans-Alleghany region from the Cherokees in 1775. The right of eminent domain over the trans-Alleghany region still vested in the crown after the treaty of Sycamore Shoals. 138 MS. Journals of James and Robert McAfee. Durrett Collection, University of Chicago. These journals are printed in Woods-McAfee Memorial. 139 Hening: Virginia Statutes at Large, x, 558. 140 Wharton: Plain Facts, 96 et seq. See also text ff. 141 Alvord: The Mississippi Valley in British Politics, ii, ch. 7; Cotterill: History of Pioneer Kentucky, 65-66. 142 T. Wharton to Walpole, September 23, 1774, in "Letter Book of Thomas Wharton," Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography, xxxiii (October, 1909). 143 For ample materials, cf. Thwaites and Kellogg: Documentary History of Dunmore's War--1774. 144 Cf. "The Inauguration of Westward Expansion," News and Observer (Raleigh, N. C.) July 5, 1914. 145 Letter of Major Pleasant Henderson, in The Harbinger (Chapel Hill, N. C), 1834.