Is it true that native Americans didn't believe in the concept of "private ownership" of land? If so, why did so many tribes fight each other or attack anyone who intruded into their lands?
Originally Answered: Is it really true that native Americans didn't believe in the concept of "private ownership" of land? If that is the case, then why did so many tribes fight each other or attack anyone who intruded their lands?
For a start, that’s not private ownership. It’s more like collective ownership. That is, land isn’t divided up into individual plots which this or that person can use or dispose of as they please. Rather, the land is collectively held by the entire tribe.
Moreover, the kinds of ownership involved were much looser than the way we conceive of property rights these days. This whole “attack anyone who intruded on their lands” bit is essentially fiction created by people who wrote westerns or (white) outsiders’ somewhat exaggerated descriptions of increasing hostility and defensiveness in reaction to generations of warfare late in the colonial era. That is, indigenous peoples learned and adopted ideas of ownership because that system was to a considerable extent forced on them. Before all of that, groups had lands they traditionally inhabited and used, but they recognized that other people might travel through their territory, hunters might cross over into their lands in pursuit of game they were chasing, and so on. These were largely regarded as legitimate. Indeed, in most cases, modest numbers of newcomers were accommodated. This person or this family have wandered in and want to settle down? Well, nobody’s using that patch of ground over there; it’ll be fine if they go use it. Substantive incursions would get pushback, but even that was less about defending property and more about defending the people and their survival. If tribe A comes in and hunts all the deer near tribe B, tribe B starves. The land itself isn’t the issue as much as the ability to inhabit the places they’ve habitually inhabited.
Oh, and let’s not forget that there were hundreds of societies across what became the US, each with their own ideas about property and ownership. More nomadic groups tended to have much looser ideas of ownership than more sedentary ones. People like, say, the Zuni or the Navajo would have a different approach to property than the Comanche or the Salish, so a lot depends on exactly who you’re talking about.
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