In 1785 at the Treaty of Fort McIntosh the United States secured from its actual possessors (the Iroquois claims having been satisfied at a second treaty at Fort Stanwix, October 1784) the first grant of land north of the Ohio. The western boundary line of the United States now began on Lake Erie, ascended the Cuyahoga, descended the Tuscarawas to the site of Fort Laurens, ran west to the portage between the Miami and St. Mary Rivers; ascending the Maumee to Lake Erie it followed the lake shore to the starting point. The lands south, east, and west of this line were given to the United States so far as the Indians "formerly claimed the same." This was the first of a long series of treaties each of which gave the northwest side of the Ohio River to the United States. Thus in 1785 the Ohio Valley legally became a part of the territory of the United States. By an ordinance immediately passed by Congress, this tract of land north of the Ohio River was ordered to be surveyed, the lots to be sold by the Government in order to create a fund to pay the war debt. A geographer and surveyors were appointed to survey and plat seven ranges of townships westward from the Pennsylvania boundary. These were to be sold by townships by commissioners of the loan office of the several states after proper advertisement. Thus, at the stroke of a pen, the Ohio River became a division line between empires differing wholly from each other. The "Virginia Side" was peopled by southerners according to the Virginia system, which allowed a man to take and mark for himself unappropriated lands. Thus the entire southern shore of the Ohio had been occupied by Virginians, Pennsylvanians, and North Carolinians. By act of Congress the New England system was extended to the land lying north of the Ohio; the land was to be properly surveyed and sold. The Ohio River at once became the western projection of Mason and Dixon's Line. In some such way as Chevalier has suggested, the Ohio River became a division fence between Roundhead and Cavalier. South of the river, lands were taken up by southerners in the old Virginia way; north of the river the New England system obtained, as though prophesying that the dominant race was to be of New England stock. It was a momentous turning point in the history of the Central West when Congress made the New England system operative on the "Indian Side" of the Ohio, banishing at once and forever from that great area the strife and suffering caused by the thousand conflicts of overlapping "tomahawk claims" and incorrect and confusing "surveys."