The maps of the early 18th century won't tell you much about the boundaries between colonial settlements and Indian Territory, because the various treaties and land cessions moved more rapidly than a mapmaker could follow them. The western boundaries of the provinces, and of the parishes and counties within the provinces, were not formally specified or surveyed. Maps through the 1750's show the western boundary of VA, NC, SC and GA as being the Mississippi River, but note that the official inhabitants of most of that region were Cherokee, Chickasaw, Choctaw and Creek. The places where people could or could not settle were written down in response to various agreements with tribal representatives, reported in, e.g., the SC Council Journals. The most complete description of how quickly the boundaries changed (and where they were when) is Robert L. Meriwether, The Expansion of South Carolina, 1729-1765. Surveyor/engineer William de Brahm produced a remarkably-accurate map of SC and its frontier townships in 1757, just before the major campaigns of the Cherokee Wars in SC. That map should be in one of the online collections. Before then, settlers had to depend on local knowledge from Indian traders or regional Deputy Surveyors in order to keep up with which land was technically OK (and usually safe) for Europeans to live on. The two westernmost frontier townships were Congarees (name changed to Saxegotha) at the trading post and fort across the Congaree River from the site of Columbia SC, and New Windsor, at the Savannah Town tradingpost and Fort Moore across the Savannah from Augusta. An Indian path connected the two trading posts. East of the path, you were "sort of" in SC; west of it, you were "sort of" in Indian territory through the 1740's. Swiss immigrants were the first settlers of both of those frontier townships: Saxegotha in 1735 and New Windsor in 1737. The British recruited Swiss settlers specifically because 1) they were renowned for their military skills; 2) they were Protestant; and 3) they were unlikely to own slaves (the large slave majority in the Low Country was as worrisome to the Charlestown plantation owners as threats from the French, Spanish and Indians). Those Swiss were aware that they were at the outer boundary of European colonization at the time. One of the first group at Saxegotha wrote home that "This country is not at the end of the world; it borders on several other countries such as Virginia and India." That particular bordering section of "India" became Ninety Six District in 1769, Edgefield District in 1785. ----- Original Message ----- From: "Frances" <frances_55-58@charter.net> To: <SCEDGEFI-L@rootsweb.com> Sent: Wednesday, December 27, 2006 10:13 PM Subject: [SCEDGEFI] Indian Territory in Edgefield Would anyone have information to the Official Indian Boundary in the Abbeville or Edgefield District in the 1700 or know of a website where there would be a map? Thanks, Frances