486 AMERICAN ANTHROPOLOGIST [n. s., i, 1899
carried on. By civilized man land is thus appropriated ; this is absolutely necessary that he may make it useful. As he appro- priates it by labor, the labor on the soil first produces a single crop. The labor of appropriating the land perhaps does not ob- tain its full reward by the first crop, but the labor for the first crop enhances the value of the land for subsequent crops.
All the land of the United States has been thus appropriated from nature — at first by individuals under grants from European governments, but since the organization of the present govern- ment it has appropriated the land and has either sold it again to individuals or allowed them to appropriate it for themselves by homestead settlement. But in assuming the ownership of the land the general government has invariably recognized the prior titles to the land inhering in the aboriginal tribes, and has pur- chased it from them by treaties, paying for the land by grants of money. The total sum thus granted is more than three hundred millions of dollars. The title of the Indians to the land was a title which arose out of a quasi-appropriation of the same — not by improving the lands themselves, but by gathering from the land their food, clothing, and shelter; still, in some cases the natives cultivated patches of soil. But the ownership of the land by these seemingly imperfect processes was fully recognized by the government of the United States.
The title to the land obtained by appropriating it through the labor of improvement has always been recognized among modern civilized peoples. But there are other agencies which give the land value, not included in that produced by improvements. Land may have an ever increasing value given it by extraneous conditions sometimes equal to or even greater than the interest on the investment as purchase money. The interest on the pur- chase money may partly or wholly be paid by the sale of farm products. In whom should the increased value to the land inhere? Men are divided in their opinion about the just method of distributing these increments of value. Our purpose is not to
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