William Johnson

“ As to lands surveyed within the Indian boundary, this Court has never hesitated to consider all such surveys and grants as wholly void; but as the total rejection of the grant, according to the case stated, goes to its validity as to that part of the land also which lay without the Indian boundary, there must be found some other ground for sustaining the decision, than that which invalidates surveys executed in the Indian territory. ”

“ By the 3d section of the act of 1777, entries are permitted within any county of the State, and the creation of counties has always, in that State, been held to bring the vacant lands within the county under the operation of that act. ”

“ Thomas, decided in this Court in 1816, (1 Wheat. Rep. 115. 155.) the inviolability of the Indian territory is fully recognised. It was the law of the land, as adjudged in the case of Avery v. Strother, decided in the North Carolina Court of Conference, in 1802. Indeed, the State of North Carolina appears to have been sedulous in her efforts to prevent encroachments upon the Indian hunting grounds, and her laws are express and pointed in invalidating entries and grants made within such reservations.
But the present grant commences in a tract of country over which the Indian title was extinct ”