The Indians were tribalists with no concept of property rights. Races, nations and tribes do not have property rights. There are no group rights, only rights of the individual. The Indians did not own land, they held tribalist political control. Anyone had a right to settle unowned land and defy the tribalist rule.

One must realize that Native Americans did not 'own' land in the sense accepted by persons of other cultures, they controlled an 'area' often of arbitrary size. At one time the Sioux controlled an area stretching from the Missouri River into the Dakotas, Wyoming and Kansas, using it for the tribe's and personal needs. They even reached into western Minnesota and Iowa. This was why the areas controlled were so vast by European standards. Ayn was right violence is never an answer, except as a last resort to protect what is owned. jlc posting above is correct, her anthropologic view is on the money.

Covet was referring to the opening line of "The question of. who owns what has been around forever.”

And Jan; that would have read wife AND property, thereby delineating the difference; Possibly more than actually existed in that time.

Ya, LOL, I'm always getting those dates cornfused. Him, Hobbs, Newton . . .
The ASA (1798-9 session, repealed 1801) was a John Adams/Federalist brain fart, never really enforced or supported, I haven't been able to find record of a single arrest, it was repealed in just six years.

Add to that the fact that the Indians were not the original landowners either. They took it from someone who took it from someone who took...etc. So what is our responsibility to protect the property someone else stole?

The Indians were not being greedy, however: the area it takes to support a Mesolithic or Paleolithic hunter/gatherer is similar to 'the area it takes to support a predator'. When we became agricultural, our settlement model changed to that of a herd of herbivores - much smaller area per person.

Jan

I should be commenting when I'm sober but you raise a truly interesting concept that has bedeviled me for decades. I wrote in a comment that "who owns what" is, perhaps, the most important question that can be asked concerning human relations.You note that Jackson who used the Indian Removal Act to drive the Indians to what is now Oklahoma off of their 1.5 billion acres. I agree with Any Rand that he who initiates physical force is wrong. According to Wiki, 100,000 Indians were driven off of their land, which when divided into 1.5 billion acres comes to 15,000 acres per Indian. So my dilemma lies in the question - how much property can any individual, race, or nation claim to be legitimately theirs? according to Yahoo "Total land area of North America (including Central America and the Caribbean): 24,486,305 km² (6,050,697,738 acres)
Total population of North America: 514,144,046
Average population density of North America: 21.0 persons per square kilometer (11.77 acres per person)" In North America, we have 11.77 acres per person. That seems to make the Indians look like land grabbers. I wish I had a cogent answer, alas, I have only questions.

Uh...ehr...because a 'wife'== 'property' ???

I do not like that equation.

Jan

Nope. When I am poo-poo-ing someone because I AGREE with them (and do not like the shape of reality) then I consider this idiosyncratic behavior. Which is both allowable and fun, but must needs be labeled clearly as such in email communications.

Jan

Even the 8th, Thou shalt not steal, can only refer to property. Or do I have some screws that need tightening?

I think you timeframe is bit off on Locke http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Locke.

What about the alien and sedition act?

When that space traveler came down and, using his laser on a rock, wrote some rules of conduct for the natives, he didn't have room to add “and property” after "Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s wife.”

and "you want your tap water to catch on fire?" --
like the neighbor's, where they drilled into a
natural gas well on the adjoining property.

fracking gets them to lying about as fast
as anything, it seems. -- j

John Locke defined Property Rights in the 1590's and Adam Smith codified their value in 1776.
Excessive governance, any extravagance beyond Thomas Jefferson's "Who governs best, governs least." is the absolute antithesis of Locke and Smith's standards. Our Constitution supported those standards, however our Founding Fathers and Mothers, failed in their consideration of their progeny. They thought, mistakenly, that our government would always be run by patriots who took literally the meaning of Kennedy's words on January 20th 1961. The "Torch was [not] passed to a new generation," it was passed to a new generation of crooks: witness what the Kennedy's did for themselves in the dissolution of the natural monopoly that was the American Telephone & Telegraph Company and how much money RFK wasted in his prosecutions of Hoffa and the Teamsters at the behest of the commercial banking industry. Hoffa and the Teamsters were not ethically correct, doing business with Sam Giancarna and the Cosa Nostra, but the 11 percent interest paid on pension fund loans was 10.975 percent better than what was being paid by the Bankers.
Our government first went off course when Andrew Jackson favored some rich business interests who rewarded him in a princely fashion for using Federal Authority and Military Power to vacate 1.5 billion acres of legally held Native American Land.
Virtually everything since, except the 13th, 14th and 19th Amendments have been similar miscarriages of Human Rights, and are violations of the sacred trust given us by our forefathers.

Hear hear

I think that the progressives always need another excuse. It is how they erode the naturally conservative and (appropriately) self-concerned nature of humankind. "You want the air to be clean, don't you?" "You mean you _want_ there to be beggars on every street corner?" "The world your grandchildren will live in will be barren and lifeless unless you give all of your rights to the ubergov."

They are on a roll.

Jan

so, Jan, "sustainability" plus eminent domain equals
the death of physical property rights ... as though
the progressives needed another excuse. -- j

Alien life form!

Jan

Yes!

Jan

And the other 97%?:-)

The road to hell is paved with...your hard-earned money extorted as taxes..

Robbie -

You are a poo-poo head. An accurate and succinct poo-poo head, but nonetheless...

Sigh. Why does this have to be the shape of reality? I so fear you have caught the gist of the situation.

Jan, behaving idiosyncratically

Should have said "Constitutionally recognized."

Like the 2nd amendment's wording does not "grant" the right to bear arms, it refers to the right's inherent existence