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  "map_content": "@Sunnie  \r\nDid the Indians Understand the Concept of Private Property?\r\nPrivate Property,\r\nU.S. History\r\n10/09/2017\r\nRyan McMaken\r\nOne of Ayn Rand\u2019s most notorious claims is that Europeans and their descendants were justified in driving Indian tribes off their lands because aboriginal Americans \u201ddid not have the concept of property or property rights,\u201d and because they \u201cwish[ed] to continue a primitive existence.\u201d Rand also claims the Indian tribes had no right to the land they lived on because \u201cthey didn\u2019t have a settled society,\u201d and \u201chad predominantly nomadic tribal \u2018cultures.\u2019\u201d Rand even uses scare quotes around \u201ccultures\u201d to perhaps imply that Indian culture was not any type of culture at all. \r\nToday, many critics of laissez-faire liberalism (i.e., libertarianism) continue to quote these lines in order to indict all defenders of private property, whom critics like to associate with Rand\u2019s peculiar ideology. \r\nAs with so many accusations that conflate Rand\u2019s beliefs with libertarians, this is misplaced. Many libertarian writers have approached the issue from a a perspective which assumes the tribes were treated unjustly. Leonard Liggio, for example, discussed the issue from this perspective in the early 1970s, and Rothbard repeatedly wrote with sympathy in Conceived in Liberty about the tribes who interacted with colonial Americans. To this day, Indian-tribe sovereignty, as weak as it is, continues to be an important check on federal power. \r\nRegardless of how one views European and American policy toward the tribes, however, the argument that the tribes and individual Indians had no concept of property \u2014 and thus whites were justified in seizing tribal lands \u2014 is a terrible argument for a variety of reasons. \r\nFirst, as we shall see, the claim that the Indians and tribes had no concept of property is completely alien to the actual historical facts in the matter. \r\nSecond, this argument is especially damaging and misguided because it creates the impression that the concept of private property is not apparent to all rational human beings, and is perhaps even an invention of European theorists. This argument, of course, is beloved by Marxists and other anti-capitalists ideologues who argue that the idea of private property is peculiar to capitalists who invented the concept to justify their own \u201cexploitation\u201d of workers. \r\nFortunately, this is not the case at all. The concept of property \u2014 in any situation where scarcity exists \u2014 is self-evident, and does not require complex theories spun by Europeans to become apparent. \r\nIndian Tribes Were not All the Same \r\nOne of the main reasons that even educated people like Rand believe that North American Indians were virtually all \u201cnomadic\u201d and did not understand the concept of property, is the influence of Hollywood. In Rand\u2019s day especially, popular culture virtually always focused primarily on Plains Indians \u2014 frequently the Lakota and Cheyenne tribes \u2014 and rarely portrayed Indian tribes with very different social structures. \r\nIn real life, Indian tribes across North America \u2014 prior to the 20th century \u2014 varied considerably in social structure, the usage of technology, and lifestyle. Indeed, whenever one encounters commentary that refers to \u201cthe Indians\u201d as a uniform group, this should be a red flag to the reader that the argument is being made by someone who knows next to nothing about the tribes. \r\nThe Pueblo Indians of New Mexico were not nomadic at all, and employed agriculture, much like the so-called \u201cFive Civilized Tribes\u201d (i.e., Cherokee, Chickasaw, Choctaw, Creek, and Seminole). The Cherokee, of course, were known for their highly-successful use of agriculture (which prompted whites to later steal their fertile lands under Andrew Jackson). The Iroquois rotated their living quarters among several preferred locations that were regarded as the best for farming and hunting. \r\nVirtually all Indian tribes recognized the validity of personal property. Individual tribe members were not expected to \u201cshare\u201d their horses, weapons, dwellings, and slaves among all other members of the tribe. \r\nIndeed, many tribes, especially among the Plains Indians, developed complex economic and social rules and mores around the so-called \u201chorse culture\u201d in which ownership of the highest quality horses were a status symbol, and a means of attaining power and prestige within the tribe. \r\nIn regards to the Comanches of the southern plains, economist Bruce Benson has observed: \r\nprivate ownership was firmly established for such things as horses, tools for hunting and gathering, food, weapons, materials used in the construction of mobile shelters, clothing, and various kinds of body ornaments that were used for religious ceremonies and other activities. Cooperative production (group raids to take horses from enemy tribes or group hunts ) did not imply communal ownership. The product of such cooperative activities was divided among participants according to their contributed effort. Individuals might share such things as food at times, but they did so out of generosity. Food could be given but not taken because it was private property not communal property. \r\nOne of the reasons that many continue to think that aboriginal Americans had no concept of private property, however, is because many tribes did regard land as being communally owned. Carl Watner explores the topic in The Journal of Libertarian Studies: \r\nMisunderstanding arising from their differing concepts of property in land was one of the main causes of disputes between the Europeans and the Indians. The Indians did not recognize land appropriation by individual members of the tribe, and even Roger Williams recognized that landownership among the Indians was usually held by the tribe. Nevertheless, among the Indians articles of personal property were owned by the individual. Each Indian tribe was perfectly well acquainted with the limits and bounds of its landholdings, even though these holdings were not enclosed in the normal European fashion. \r\nAs voluntary associations, the tribes could, and in fact did, historically, sell their rights to the soil by allowing their chiefs to represent tribal interests. These chiefs were authorized to make and execute deeds on behalf of the tribe, to receive for the tribe the consideration for the deeds, and to divide such consideration among the individuals of the tribe. The authority of the chiefs, so acting for the whole tribe, is attested by the presence and assent of the individuals composing the tribe and by their receipt of their respective share of the price.\u201d Thus could the Indian tribes deal with the Europeans for the sale of their lands, and granted that the chiefs had this authority, it must be admitted that they were capable of determining what in their opinion would be ample compensation for their lands. \r\nTo take this reality and thus conclude that Indians \u2014 or the tribes \u2014 had no concept of private property \u2014 is to define down property to the point of being useless. \r\nAs I\u2019ve noted in the past, communal property is private property, since ownership is restricted to specific groups of people, to the exclusion of others. Communal property is not \u201cshared\u201d among just anyone who wants to use it. Communal property is not unowned. \r\nThis issue is further complicated by an overly restrictive idea of homesteading employed by some libertarian theorists.  \r\nJohn Locke, of course, famously asserted that ownership of land can be obtained through three methods:\r\n Homestead it via fencing it in, protecting it, and proclaiming that it is under your ownership.\r\n Acquiring the property title via voluntary transfer.\r\n Claiming abandoned land by adverse possession: move on it, fence it, mix one\u2019s labor with it, etc.\r\nThose who claim that the Indian tribes had no right to their land, often employ this reasoning to build their case. But this is too limiting in its idea of homesteading the land. Consider, for example, that a plot of land exists with a lake on it. Inside the lake are fish. A group of Indians then claims the lake as their own, in order to catch the fish, and excludes other groups from entering into the land. Have they homesteaded it?\r\nA strict view of Lockean \u201cimprovement\u201d (i.e., mixing labor with the land) might be that the group of Indians have no claim to the land because they have not improved it by planting trees or putting a fence around it. In fact, the very act of excluding others is an act of improvement because limiting use of the lake ensures the lake is not overfished, and preserves the value of the land for use by a specific group of owners. The homesteading tribe has not left the lake to its \u201cnatural\u201d state. Access has been controlled for the specific purpose of preserving value. \r\nIn practice, value can be added to land in any number of ways, and land is useful for many purposes other than planting crops or building a factory. \r\nThus, when nomadic tribes exclude others from specific hunting lands, they are preserving those resources \u2014 such as fertile grazing areas for game \u2014 that give the land value. If hunting grounds are not exclusive, and result in overhunting which drives away game, then the value of the land has been destroyed for hunting purposes. By preventing this destruction of value, the homesteaders have asserted their ownership of the land in question. \r\nIn spite of the tribes\u2019 habitual use of personal property, and in spite of a clear understanding that ownership in land can be both asserted and traded, the idea that the Indians \u201ddid not have the concept of property or property rights,\u201d continues to endure in some corners of the libertarian world and among conservatives. It is an ahistorical and fact-free approach that should be abandoned as soon as possible. \r\nImpact Report\r\nWhat is the Mises Institute?\r\nThe Mises Institute is a non-profit organization that exists to promote teaching and research in the Austrian School of economics, individual freedom, honest history, and international peace, in the tradition of Ludwig von Mises and Murray N. Rothbard. \r\nNon-political, non-partisan, and non-PC, we advocate a radical shift in the intellectual climate, away from statism and toward a private property order. We believe that our foundational ideas are of permanent value, and oppose all efforts at compromise, sellout, and amalgamation of these ideas with fashionable political, cultural, and social doctrines inimical to their spirit.",
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