159; Michaux, p.

122, etc.] Trouble with Land Titles.
The trouble these poor French settlers had with their lands was far from unique.

The early system of land sales in the West was most unwise.

In Kentucky and Tennessee the grants were made under the laws of Virginia and North Carolina, and each man purchased or preempted whatever he could, and surveyed it where he liked, with a consequent endless confusion of titles.

The National Government possessed the disposal of the land in the Northwest and in Mississippi; and it avoided the pitfall of unlimited private surveying; but it made little effort to prevent swindling by land companies, and none whatever to people the country with actual settlers.