Under them large quantities of land had been sold or allotted, and hundreds of homes had been built on the lands thus won by the whites or ceded by the Indians.

As with all Indian treaties, it was next to impossible to say exactly how far these agreements were binding, because no persons, not even the Indians themselves, could tell exactly who had authority to represent the tribes.

[Footnote: American State Papers, Public Lands, I., p.

40, vi.] The Commissioners paid little heed to these treaties, and drew the boundary so that quantities of land which had been entered under regular grants, and were covered by the homesteads of the frontiersmen, were declared to fall within the Cherokee line.

Moreover, they even undertook to drive all settlers off these lands.
Of course, such a treaty excited the bitter anger of the frontiersmen, and they scornfully refused to obey its provisions.