To sound the Cherokees regarding the purchase and to arrange, if possible, for a conference, Henderson dispatched Boone to the Indian towns in the early days of 1775.
Since we have just learned that Dunmore's War compelled the Shawanoes and their allies to relinquish their right to Kentucky, that, both before and after that event, government surveyors were in the territory surveying for the soldiers' claims, and that private individuals had already laid out town sites and staked holdings, it may be asked what right of ownership the Cherokees possessed in Kentucky, that Henderson desired to purchase it of them.

The Indian title to Kentucky seems to have been hardly less vague to the red men than it was to the whites.
Several of the nations had laid claim to the territory.

As late as 1753, it will be remembered, the Shawanoes had occupied a town at Blue Licks, for John Findlay had been taken there by some of them.

But, before Findlay guided Boone through the Gap in 1769, the Shawanoes had been driven out by the Iroquois, who claimed suzerainty over them as well as over the Cherokees.

In 1768, the Iroquois had ceded Kentucky to the British Crown by the treaty of Fort Stanwix; whereupon the Cherokees had protested so vociferously that the Crown's Indian agent, to quiet them, had signed a collateral agreement with them.