One of the most industrious of those interested in the sale of Spanish lands was George Morgan, of New Jersey.(112) In 1788, he tried to secure land in Illinois also. He and his associates petitioned Congress to sell them a tract of land on the Mississippi. A congressional committee found upon investigation that the proposed purchase comprised all of the French settlements in Illinois.(113) Thereupon was passed the Act of June 20, 1788. According to its provisions, the French inhabitants of Illinois were to be confirmed in their possessions and each family which was living in the district before the year 1783 was to be given a bounty of four hundred acres. These bounty-lands were to be laid off in three parallelograms, at Kaskaskia, Prairie du Rocher, and Cahokia, respectively. They were to be bounded on the east by the ridge of rocks—a natural formation trending from north to south, a short distance to the east of the French settlements. Morgan was to be sold a large described tract for not less than sixty-six and two-thirds cents per acre. Indian titles were to be extinguished if necessary.(114) The Act of June 20, 1788, is an important landmark in the settlement of Illinois. The grant of bounty-lands was made for the purpose of giving the French settlers a means of support when the fur-trade and hunting should have become unprofitable from the advance of American settlement. This was a clear acknowledgment that the Indians were right in believing, as they did, that the American settlement would be fatal to Indian hunting-grounds. The Indians were soon bitterly hostile. Then, too, the claims of the settlers to land, founded upon French, British, or Virginia grants, were to be investigated. This investigation dragged on year after year, even for decades, and as it was the policy of the United States not to sell public land in Illinois until these claims were settled, the country became a great squatters’(115) camp. The length of the investigation was doubtless due in part to the utter carelessness of the French in giving and in keeping their evidences of title. By a congressional resolution of August 28, 1788, it was provided that the lands donated to Illinois settlers should be located east, instead of west, of the ridge of rocks. As this would throw the land too far from the settlements to be available, petitions followed for the restoration of the provisions of June 20, and in 1791 the original location was decreed. By a resolution of August 29, 1788, the governor of the Northwest Territory was ordered to carry out the provisions of the acts of June 20 and August 28, 1788, respectively.(116)