TJ compiled his chronology largely from accounts of North America written by French explorers and settlers. Among the works upon which he principally relied were memoirs by three of La Salle’s lieutenants: Louis hennepin, Henri joutel, and Henri de tonti (Sowerby, description begins E. Millicent Sowerby, comp., Catalogue of the Library of Thomas Jefferson, Washington, D.C., 1952-59, 5 vols. description ends Nos. 4066, 4067, 4073, and 4072). Two settlers of Louisiana, Antoine-Simon Le Page du pratz and Jean-François Benjamin dumont de Montigny, wrote histories of the colony that also shaped TJ’s timeline (Sowerby, description begins E. Millicent Sowerby, comp., Catalogue of the Library of Thomas Jefferson, Washington, D.C., 1952-59, 5 vols. description ends Nos. 4068, 4069). The choice of these sources elevated La Salle’s explorations over those of earlier Spanish parties, and focused attention on the first decades of the eighteenth century, the period when French efforts to settle the lower Mississippi Valley began in earnest (Gordon Sayre, Les Sauvages Américains: Representations of Native Americans in French and English Colonial Literature [Chapel Hill, 1997], 326-7, 329; Gordon Sayre, “Plotting the Natchez Massacre: Le Page du Pratz, Dumont de Montigny, Chateaubriand,” Early American Literature, 37 [2002], 385-6.

An article printed in Baltimore’s american patriot, appearing originally in the 26 July issue of the Charleston City Gazette and Daily Advertiser, claimed as “a pretty well known fact” that Spain had preserved the jurisdictional division of East and West Florida, with the former dependent on the governor general of Cuba, and the latter governed by the colonial administration at New Orleans. It acknowledged also that “we have no regular distinct account of any fixed or ascertained boundaries by Spain, as all the acts of that government are involved in great mystery” (Baltimore American Patriot, 11 Aug. 1803).

For Robert Livingston’s letter to monroe, see Livingston to TJ, 26 May.

objections des commissaires anglois: that is, “The British commissioners’ objections concerning the uncertainty of Acadia’s borders, etc. The old, established borders of Acadia extend from Bay François (the Bay of Fundy) to Cape Canso. Any claim of uncertainty can refer only to inland boundaries. In such cases, the most common and appropriate rule is to extend the internal borders to the source of the rivers that empty at the coast. In other words, each nation has the flowing waters on its side. This is what was done in the Treaty of the Pyrenees to set the border between France and Spain, etc.” The passage replaced an extract of the 1714 French royal grant of Louisiana to Antoine Crozat, which TJ had appended to the draft version. It was drawn from the first volume of Mémoires des commissaires du roi et de ceux de sa Majesté Britannique, sur les possessions & les droits respectifs des deux Couronnes en Amérique, a compendium of documents produced during negotiations over Canada and the West Indies, published in Paris in 1755 (Sowerby, description begins E. Millicent Sowerby, comp., Catalogue of the Library of Thomas Jefferson, Washington, D.C., 1952-59, 5 vols. description ends No. 1452). TJ generally referred to the four-volume set as memoires de l’amerique (Vol. 7:288; Vol. 23:298; TJ to Abiel Holmes, 7 Dec. 1804). TJ is quoting from the 12th article of the French response to the British commissioners, dated 4 Oct. 1751. For his own interpretation of the passage, see Document II below.