_Protest of North Carolina and Georgia._--During the pendency of negotiations, William Blount, of North Carolina, and John King and Thomas Glasscock, of Georgia, presented their commissions as the agents representing the interests of their respective States. They entered formal protests in the names of those States against the validity of the treaty, as containing several stipulations which infringed and violated the legislative rights thereof. The principal of these was the right, as assumed by the commissioners, of assigning to the Indians, territory which had already been appropriated, by act of the legislature in the case of North Carolina, to the discharge of bounty-land claims of the officers and soldiers of that State who had served in the Continental line during the Revolution.[52]
There were present at this treaty, according to the report of the commissioners, 918 Cherokees, to whom, after the signature and execution thereof, were distributed as presents goods to the value of $1,311-10/90. The meagerness of the supply was occasioned, as the commissioners explained, by their expectancy of only meeting the chiefs and headmen.[53]
_Location of boundaries._--In the location of the boundary points between the Cherokees and whites, recited in the fourth article of the treaty, it is proper to remark that--
1. The route of the line along the ridge between Cumberland and Tennessee Rivers, and from thence to the Cumberland, at a point 40 miles above Nashville, has already been recited.
2. "The ford where the Kentucky road crosses the river" (Cumberland) is at a point opposite the mouth of Left-Hand Fork, about 12 or 13 miles slightly west of north of Cumberland Gap. From the point "40 miles above Nashville" to this ford, the commissioners adopted, as they declare, the line of Henderson's Purchase; while from the "Kentucky Ford" to the mountain, 6 miles south of the mouth of Camp Creek on Nolichucky, they followed the boundary prescribed by the treaty of July 20, 1777, with Virginia and North Carolina.[54]
3. "Campbell's line" was surveyed in 1777-'78 by General William Campbell, as a commissioner for marking the boundary between Virginia and the Cherokees. It extended from the mouth of Big Creek to the high knob on Poor Valley Ridge, 332 poles S. 70° E. of the summit of the main ridge of Cumberland Mountain, a short distance west of Cumberland Gap.[55] The point at which the treaty line of 1785 struck Campbell's line was at the Kentucky road crossing, about 1-1/2 miles southeast of Cumberland Gap.