Moving West After the Revolution

Before independence, the British had tried to slow settlement west of the Appalachians, partly to avoid costly conflicts with Native nations. Once the war ended and that restraint disappeared, settlers crossed the mountains fast. Land in the Ohio Valley was cheap and plentiful compared to the crowded East, and the new federal government wanted settlers there. Selling western land was also a way to raise money and pay down the massive war debt, so Congress had every reason to open the door wide.

To sell that land without endless boundary disputes, the government used the township and range survey system. It divided the Northwest Territory into a grid of townships six miles square, each split into 36 numbered sections of one square mile, 640 acres. Surveyors laid this grid down before a single settler bought an acre, so every plot had a clear, recorded location. That turned messy frontier claims into a predictable product: buyers knew exactly what they were purchasing, and the government could auction land in an orderly way and collect revenue from it.

None of this was uncontested ground. Native nations in the Ohio country, organized loosely as the Western Confederacy, fought to keep settlers out. Miami leader Little Turtle won major victories over federal forces, including a devastating defeat of General Arthur St. Clair's army in 1791. The United States responded by building a stronger, better-trained army under Anthony Wayne, who defeated the confederacy at the Battle of Fallen Timbers in 1794. The resulting Treaty of Greenville in 1795 forced Native nations to cede most of Ohio, clearing the way for the settlement the survey grid had already mapped out.