English and Indian views on "owning" land

To be English and not own your own land in the New World meant one thing and one thing only: indentured servitude. In order to pay for your passage over, you had to forfeit yourself to serve as a cheap laborer, barely above the status of a slave, for a bulk of your most healthy years (since the average lifespan was so short then). Also, the more land that one owned, the “freer” – not only economically but legally, politically, and in thought, action, and beliefs – one became. Prerequisites for being able to vote almost always came with the requirement of land ownership, with one example being Virginia Governor William Berkeley. Berkeley’s Viriginia had vast imbalances in the distribution of wealth. When it was first founded, the economic wealth gained from tobacco farming had enriched the colony’s founders and its middle-class landholders in near equal measure. But the governor soon began to favor the richest landowners with the choicest properties and left those who had fulfilled their indentured servitude to either work on a plantation or hit the road to claim unsettled land on the dangerous frontier. When he also made land ownership a prerequisite to the right to vote, it contributed to an uprising of poor whites and indentured servants who eventually carried out what would become known as Bacon’s Rebellion (granted, this rebellion was led by rich whites). A further complaint of the members of this Rebellion was that governor Berkeley was too friendly to Indians, and he refused demands by Bacon that he take the Indians’ land by force to accommodate white citizens. “Our design,” Bacon wrote, “[is] not only to ruin and extirpate all Indians in general, but all manner of trade and commerce with them” (Freedom 50). In the English view, owning land equated to wealth, stability, and power (as well as the ability to send a portion of it back home in support of the realm), and anything preventing its acquisition – including indigenous people – were merely obstacles to be overcome by any means necessary.

An excellent example of a contrasting style of leadership and land ownership occurred in New England, in William Penn’s new Quaker colony and “holy experiment” of Pennsylvania. In his view, all people – including women, blacks, and Indians – truly were equal, and he purchased land from the Indians before reselling it to colonists. “Sometimes, he even purchased the same land twice, when more than one Indian tribe claimed it” (Liberty 98). He also distributed the colony’s landmass at low prices. His “Chain of Friendship” promised to help protect Indians who were under other tribes’ rule, as well as provided sanctuary for ousted tribes, both practices being virtually unheard of at the time. Alas, even in this society of equality, political power was once again only granted to those who owned land. Penn established an “assembly elected by male taxpayers and ‘freemen’ (owners of 100 acres of land for free immigrants and 50 acres for former indentured servants)” (Liberty 99). This did, however, still essentially give the right to vote to the majority of the male population.

In direct conflict with the English view of land ownership, Indians believed that land could never be privately owned. As they accepted and believed that the Earth and everything upon it had its own spirit, how could one creature claim superiority enough to lay claim on a part of it? In their eyes, it would be the same as trying to say you owned the wind or the sky. The English brought and employed their own definition of land ownership, charging that the natives had no real claim on their lands because they did not work to cultivate or improve it. In the early seventeenth century, during the first colonies’ beginning years and initial contact with Indians, the English “recognized Indians’ title based on occupancy” (Liberty 60), and as such compensated them after seizing their land. But as the generations went on and populations grew, this façade crumbled and led to putting down, keeping down, and running off (or murdering) vast populations of Indians in fierce pursuit of their lands.