and in Spain's possession they remained for several years, but after 1803 the United States also claimed the area west of the Perdido River as part of the Louisiana Purchase. The treaty of 1819 81 put an end to the disputes.

Meantime, in 1800, by the secret treaty of San Ildefonso, Spain promised to return Louisiana to France. In the language of the treaty, she pledged herself to return to France "the colony and province of Louisiana, in the same extent it now has under the dominion of Spain and of other States." 82

Immediately after this transfer became known (November, 1802) measures were set on foot by President Jefferson for obtaining free access to the sea by way of the Mississippi River. Circumstances favored this negotiation. Bonaparte was at that time in almost daily expectation of a declaration of war by Great Britain, the first act of which would be to seize the mouth of the Mississippi and with it the Province of Louisiana. Under these circumstances Bonaparte offered to sell the Province to the United States, and the offer was promptly accepted.88 The consideration named was 60,000,000 francs and the assumption by the United States of the "French spoliation claims," which were estimated to amount to $3,750,000. Article III of the treaty of cession, dated April 30, 1803, fixed the rate of exchange at 5.3333 francs to $1. The total payments made by the United States on account of this purchase, including interest, amount to $23,213,567.73. Opponents of this purchase strongly urged that it was contrary to the Constitution of the United States.84

The treaty of cession 85 describes the territory only as being the same as that ceded by Spain to France by the treaty of San Ildefonso, from which the description was quoted. From this it appears that the territory sold comprised that part of the drainage basin of the Mississippi which lies west of the course of the river. (See fig. 2.) The claim of the United States to the area now comprised in Oregon, Washington, and Idaho in the negotiations with Great Britain

1 Malloy, W. M., op. cit., vol. 2, p. 1651. See also Cox, I. J., The West Florida controversy, 1798–1813, Baltimore, Johns Hopkins Press, 1918.

25th Cong., 2d sess., H. Rept. 818, p. 27, 1838. See p. 69 for the cession of 1762 from France to Spain.

83 For copies of correspondence between the United States and various foreign officials, of dates from 1803 to 1807, relating to this purchase, its boundaries, etc., see Robertson, J. A., Louisiana under the rule of Spain, France, and the United States,, vol. 2, Cleveland, 1911. See also State papers and correspondence bearing upon the purchase of the Territory of Louisiana: 57th Cong., 2d sess., H. Doc. 431, 1903. Marshall, T. M., A history of the western boundary of the Louisiana Purchase, 1819-1841: California Univ. Pub. History, vol. 2, pp. 46-85, 1914. On pp. 242-251 of Marshall's book there is a bibliography of publications relating to the Louisiana Purchase.

84 See Brown, E. S., The constitutional history of the Louisiana Purchase: California Univ. Pub. History, vol. 10, Berkeley, 1920. See also Baldwin, S. E., The historic policy of the United States as to annexation: Am. Hist. Assoc. Rept. for 1893 (53d Cong., 2d sess., S. Misc. Doc. 104), pp. 369-389, 1894.

regarding the northwestern boundary was ostensibly based not only upon prior occupation and upon purchase from Spain but also upon the alleged fact that this area formed part of the Louisiana Purchase. That this claim was baseless is shown not only by what has been already detailed regarding the limits of the purchase but also by the direct testimony of the French plenipotentiary, M. Barbé-Marbois. Some 20 years after the purchase he published a book on Louisiana, in which he described at some length the negotiations that preceded the purchase and, referring to this question, said: "The shores of the western ocean were certainly not comprised in the cession, but already the United States are established there."

86

There is also in Barbé-Marbois's book a map (dated 1829) of the country between the Mississippi and the Pacific, on which the western extent of Louisiana is indicated as the 110th meridian, which is not far from the western limit of the drainage basin of the Mississippi in Wyoming and Montana. That part of the country now comprised in Oregon, Washington, and Idaho, which, it has been claimed, formed part of the purchase, bears the following legend: "Territories and countries occupied by the United States, following the treaty of cession of Louisiana."

From this it appears that although the United States certainly did not purchase Oregon as a part of Louisiana, it is no less certain that that great area west of the Rocky Mountains fell into its hands as a direct consequence of the Louisiana Purchase.87

The claim made by the United States to the territory between the Mississippi and the Rio Grande as part of the Louisiana Purchase was based principally on the settlement made by La Salle at San Bernardo [now Matagorda] Bay, Tex. (see pl. 4), in 1685,88 and on numerous maps that indicated the area as part of the French possessions, but this claim was not recognized by Spain and the boundary west of the Mississippi River was undetermined until it was fixed at the Sabine River by the treaty of 1819.

The treaty of 1783 with Great Britain describes the northern boundary of the United States in part as follows: From the northwesternmost point of the Lake of the Woods "on a due west course to the River Mississippi." The fact that such a line could not intersect the Mississippi proper at any point (see fig. 18) gave rise to many and serious disputes, which were not settled' until after the date of the Louisiana Purchase. This clause of the treaty was understood by some geographers as placing the boundary line on the Lake of the Woods parallel for some 400 miles west from the lake

80 Barbé-Marbois, François de, The history of Louisiana, etc. delphia, Carey & Son, 1830.

See Mowry, W. A., op. cit., pp. 131-157.

See Bancroft, H. H., Works, vol. 16, p. 46, San Francisco, 1889.

(translation), Phila

to the point where it intersects the Missouri-Mississippi drainage basin, which in 1783 belonged to Spain, thus including the southern part of the basin of the Red River as United States territory. Other geographers who had given the subject careful study believed that the possessions of the United States in the northwest as defined by the treaty of 1783 were limited by the Mississippi River and a line extending north from its source (Lake Itasca 89) to an intersection with the Lake of the Woods parallel. (See p. 33.)

Still others considered the Red River Basin south of the 49th parallel to be a part of the Louisiana Purchase. The Red River Basin was not a part of La Salle's original claim, but it appears to have been occupied by the French earlier than 1762. In the Encyclopædia Britannica (13th ed., vol. 4, p. 705) it is stated that La Vérendrye, a French Canadian, was the first white man of record to explore the country from the site of Winnipeg westward to the Rocky Mountains. (See pl. 4.)

The treaty of 1763 between Great Britain, France, and Spain limited Great Britain's jurisdiction on the northwest by the Mississippi River, as will be seen from the following quotation from Article VII:

In order to re-establish peace on solid and durable foundations, and to remove for ever all subject of dispute with regard to the limits of the British and French territories on the continent of America; it is agreed, that, for the future, the confines between the dominions of his Britannic Majesty, and those of his most Christian Majesty, in that part of the world, shall be fixed irrevocably by a line drawn along the middle of the River Mississippi, from its source to the River Iberville.

When this treaty was made Great Britain apparently knew nothing of the secret treaty of the preceding year whereby France had ceded the Louisiana territory to Spain. It is evident, however, that Great Britain intended to relinquish all claim to jurisdiction over the area west of the Mississippi. In 1763 and for many years thereafter the Mississippi was believed to rise considerably north of its actual known source. On the Mitchell map (pl. 5) the source was said to be at about the "50th degree of latitude." Even if the area assigned to France did not extend as far north as latitude 50° it apparently included all that part of the Red River drainage basin west of the actual source of the Mississippi.

The British act of 1774 extended the Province of Quebec to include the area west of Pennsylvania north of the Ohio River and east of the Mississippi. The boundaries were more definitely described in

89 See Baker, J. H., Minnesota Hist. Coll., vol. 6, pt. 1, 1887; also Brower, J. V., idem, vol. 7, 1893. Lake Itasca is generally referred to as the source of the Mississippi, but a creek about 4 miles in length that empties into the southern part of the lake has a source more than 100 feet above the lake. Lake Itasca is about 31⁄2 miles in length. The name Itasca was coined by Schoolcraft in 1832 from parts of two Latin words, veritas (truth) and caput (head), three letters from each word being omitted.

the commission issued to the governor in December of the same year, in part as follows:

and along the bank of the said river [Ohio] westward to the banks of the Mississippi, and northward along the eastern bank of the said river to the southern boundary of the territory granted to the Merchant Adventurers of England trading to Hudson's Bay.

66

The Canadian General Government and the Province of Ontario have made extensive researches concerning the western boundary of Ontario, and the reports give an excellent historical review of the French, Spanish, and English claims to the country about the Lake of the Woods, including the Red River and Mississippi River drainage basins, from the first exploration down to 1818 and later. The reports fill several large volumes, and among them may be mentioned Report of the select committee on the boundaries between the Province of Ontario and the unorganized territories of the Dominion," Ottawa, 1880, and "Correspondence, papers, and documents * * * relating to the northerly and westerly boundaries of Ontario,” Toronto, 1882. A careful examination of these and other official documents fails to disclose any statement of claims by Great Britain to the area west of the Mississippi east of the Rocky Mountains and south of the Lake of the Woods parallel.

The commissioner for Ontario, in reporting to the lieutenant governor of that Province with reference to the boundary of Ontario. stated (p. 340 of the 1880 report) that

In framing the treaty of Paris a few years later [1782] the Imperial Government recognized the Mississippi as an existing territorial boundary. All the country east of that river and south of a line drawn through the middle of the Great Lakes to the most northwestern point of the Lake of the Woods was surrendered to the United States. All the country west of the Mississippi, extending south to 31° of north latitude and east to the Atlantic Ocean, was left to its former owners [Spain].

90

On the Faden map of 1783 9° a heavy green line is drawn from the head of the Mississippi River to the Lake of the Woods. The boundary of the Hudson Bay territory, as fixed by the treaty of Utrecht, is indicated by a red line running east and west from the Lake of the Woods. West of the green line, west of the Mississippi River and south of the red line, the area is marked "Louisiana," and in its northern part a river running northward is marked "Mississippi or Red River." If the evidence of this map may be accepted, the Red River area south of the Lake of the Woods parallel was considered a part of Louisiana.

00 The United States of North America, with British and Spanish territories according to the treaty; engraved by William Faden, 1783. Faden was in June, 1783, appointed geographer to the King.