History of Land Ownership in the United States
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COVER STORY From Metes and Bounds to Grids or a CliffsNotes™ History of Land Ownership in the United States by Richard Norejko, CMS The statements made or opinions expressed by authors in Fair & Equitable do not necessarily represent a policy position of the International Association of Assessing Officers. rivate land ownership in the United States is essentially Valley, to the woodland villages of the Northeast. In Central a reflection of American history. The tremendous and South America, they constructed even more complex Pwillingness of the colonists, living in a new world, to societies. The Aztecs of Mexico and the Inca of Peru created experiment with new ideas and new rules is what has offered aristocracies and emperors. The Aztec capital of Tenochtitlán them the opportunity to own a piece of real estate—a piece (modern-day Mexico City), with a population of 200,000 of America. Americans have always shown a kind of forward- people, may have actually been the largest city in the world looking-ness, a special welcome to the new and the untried. on October 12, 1492. We don’t feel constrained by the habits of other people or It was inevitable that the Western Hemisphere would be of other times. We truly believe that as a nation we are like “discovered” by a civilization from the East. The events lead- nothing else the world has ever seen before. ing up to Columbus’s “discovery” actually began when the How did we get to this point? What happened to create this Roman Empire dumped the old Roman gods in favor of situation? Who has been influential in the process? How did Christianity. Along with the eventual collapse of the Roman property descriptions develop from the metes-and-bounds Empire arose a new religion, Islam, which overran the old system of colonial times to today’s grid system? This article Roman provinces of Asia Minor and Northern Africa, all the offers a whirlwind tour of how land ownership developed in way to the borders of modern-day France. the United States of America. In 1096, the chief of Europe’s Christian church, Pope Ur- ban II, called for a mighty effort to recover the sacred city of East Meets West Jerusalem, where Christianity was born, from the hands of Americans have a deep-seated passion for freedom, a free- Islam. The Pope’s call became a military crusade. Thousands dom present in American life and American experience of Europeans who had never strayed more than a few miles since the first moment we began to think of ourselves as from the place of their birth now had to recapture a city in something different from Europe. That moment could be a very distant land. said to have occurred when, in 1492, a Genoese entrepre- neur and navigator named Christopher Columbus caught These Holy Crusades taught Europeans two important his first glimpse of the island shores of what was, for him at lessons: first, how to organize and support large-scale expedi- least, a New World. At this time, however, the Americas were tions and explorations of previously unknown territory, and already settled. second, how to enrich themselves from trade and cultural exchange with Palestine and the Islamic world. For thousands of years, Indians had spread throughout the Western Hemisphere, and by the year 1500, it has been esti- The lure of trade encouraged Europeans and European mated that the North American population alone may have governments to undertake an ambitious series of explora- been 10–15 million. These Native Americans probably spoke tions aimed at opening new markets. In 1271 the Venetian more than 300 different languages in at least 12 entirely dif- Marco Polo set off on a three-year journey to the very heart ferent language systems or language stems. They also had of the Chinese Empire. Polo spent 17 years in China, and developed more than 600 autonomous social systems that when he returned to Europe in 1295, he published a rollick- were radically different from each other, from the pueblos ing account of his adventures and the fortunes that could of the Southwest, to the fortified towns of the Mississippi be made in trade with the Far East. Fair & Equitable • January 2009 3 Cover Story The Europeans who profited the most India. Columbus and his men were not from the new world of trade opened up glad to discover the Americas. by the Crusades were the Italian city-states Explorers, supported by various Euro- and the port cities of Southern Europe. pean governments, tried their very best Western Europeans were also determined to find a water route around or through not to miss the opportunity for wealth in America. Ferdinand Magellan sailed the East. Since the Italian city-states con- southward around South America into trolled the Mediterranean routes, Western the Pacific Ocean. Amerigo Vespucci Europeans wanted to find another route and Martin Frobisher probed northward to Marco Polo’s China. The Portuguese looking for a northwest passage through underwrote expeditions that proved it was North America. When no such path ap- possible to sail south around the coast of peared, these European countries turned West Africa into the Indian Ocean. The their attention elsewhere. Spanish were right behind the Portuguese in breaking out into the Atlantic. It was individual freebooters who took a second look at America, not as an ob- In 1492, a navigator from the Italian stacle to the Far East, but as a source of trading emporium of Genoa named wealth. In 1519 Hernando Cortés spent Christopher Columbus persuaded the two years in Central America pillaging, King and Queen of Spain to finance and Portrait of Christophorus Columbus, created massacring, and finally capturing several support an expedition of sailing, not east between 1890 and 1940. (Source: Library of kings’-ransom-worth of gold and silver. In into the Mediterranean Sea and then Congress Prints and Photographs Division) 1532, Francisco Pizarro mounted a similar overland to the Near and Far East, or even campaign against the Inca of Peru. He too India. Instead, they were two enormous south around Africa, but due west into rampaged and pillaged the Inca Empire, continents stretching from north to the Atlantic, so that Spain could arrive seizing up to $65 million in Inca treasure. south like a great barrier across the At- directly at China’s back door. Other Spanish adventures swarmed over lantic. And a barrier they were, because Central America and the North American the discovery of these continents was Christopher Columbus Southeast looking for treasure to repeat met with disappointment rather than joy. Columbus set sail from Spain in August the examples of Cortés and Pizarro. 1492 and in October landed in what he They constituted a major obstacle to the thought were islands off the coast of real goal, which was reaching China and The wealth generated by extraction of riches from the Americas made Spain a major political force in Europe through- out the 1600s. But Spain managed its American profits poorly and was unable to match the energy of France’s rise to European dominance. The French pro- ceeded to copy the Spanish program by mounting extraction incursions of their own in North America. The French found in abundance something almost as valuable as gold, fur—beaver, fox, lynx—to extract and bring to Europe. Like Spain, France used its exploration and opening of North America for extraction rather than settle- ment. There was one more European sea power that had not been heard from, and that was England. America Is Settled Of all the European nations facing the At- lantic Ocean, none would ordinarily have seemed to have greater advantages for entering the race for North American ex- ploration than England—better than the Christopher Columbus among Indians, lithograph created between 1850 and 1900. (Source Spanish, better than the French, better Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division) 4 Fair & Equitable • January 2009 the 41st parallel (Long Island Sound). genocide, and an epidemic of diseases Another English-chartered company, the like smallpox and measles that proved Massachusetts Bay Company, organized deadly to the natives in both Americas, in 1628, was granted rights to the area be- the population plummeted. For instance, tween the Charles and Merrimack rivers in Massachusetts Bay, smallpox wiped and westward to the Pacific Ocean. out 90 percent of the Native American However, the settlers of the two colo- population. By the time of the American nies could not have been more different. Revolution it is estimated that only 1 mil- The passengers headed to Virginia were lion Native Americans remained. usually single men whose average age was 20, most of whom were going as servant The Settlers Define Land labor. The settlers in Massachusetts were Ownership usually complete households with the av- Another problem was the lack of prop- erage age of the heads of households be- erty corners, fences, and boundaries in ing 36. In other words, those bound for pre-Columbus North America. While Virginia were footloose and poor, while the inhabiting tribes had vastly differ- those headed for New England were a ent cultures, they did have one thing in community. As one Englishman later common: no permanent occupational put it, America was a place where one boundary markers or written legal instru- could go to “live bravely,” to live without ments for claiming ownership. In Native restraint in a new unchartered land. American culture, land was common property for everyone. “What is this you The facts that the New World had al- call property?” Massasoit, a leader of the Elizabeth I, Queen of England, 1533-1603, ready been discovered centuries before copyright 1904 by G.