Massasoit Quotes
What is this you call property? It cannot be the earth for the land is our mother… How can one man say it belongs only to him?
Massasoit, ?-1676, Chief of the Wampanoag Indians, Quoted in Andro Linklater, Measuring America
Sourced by: Eigen's Political and Historical Quotations
Paine, one of America’s founding fathers and the man most responsible for influencing Americans to revolt, is generally not given much attention in modern times. One of the main reasons was that his philosophy regarding land and land ownership is today considered socialist if not communist. Paine’s other views are mostly Apple pie American, but this is shocking to many Americans.
Earlier, treaties had been negotiated whereby whites purchased certain Indian lands. Tecumseh and others had objected not only to the concept of land sale, but to those who had sold the lands {612650}.
The Bushmen are of the indigenous people of Botswana who have only had extended contact with the larger world recently.
This is an important quotations for two reasons. First, one of the white Europan myths in the colonial era was that the Native America had not concept of land ownership and title. This quotation clearly refutes that/ Second, this shows that some Europeans coming to the new world opposed the view that the white Christians and a moral right to the Native American “heathen” land. A few like Williams did not.
Use included renting it. What he opposed was simply holding land when whites were driving Indians off their lands because all the unused land outside of the reservation was owned by someone and the asking price was very high. Ingersoll was considered to be the greatest orator and political thinker of his day, but his overt atheistic views curtailed his elected political career.
The line, like many in good poetry, has several levels of meaning. The most obvious is that we had explored and conquered the land, before we became a nation.
Essentially whereas many property owners have paid for their ownership in recent times, almost all real estate, wherever it is, that is privately owned was at some time in the past obtained by force, fraud, deceit, from someone else. In most cases, the owners who were killed, defrauded or otherwise removed from their land, had previously killed, defrauded or otherwise removed owners before them. There is almost no guilt untainted land. This was not just a product of capitalism, but has been a factor in every ism that has governed human society.
Jackson refused to obey this decision, He was the only American President who disobeyed a Supreme Court Decision. In doing this, he killed tens of thousands of Indians, allowed the Southern Whites to steal most of the Cherokee land. His Indian Removal, contrary to this Supreme Court decision, was the worst case of ethnic cleansing in the history of the United States.
Massasoit Sachem (/ˌmæsəˈsɔɪ(ɪ)t/) or Ousamequin (c. 1581 – 1661) was the sachem or leader of the Wampanoag confederacy. Massasoit means Great Sachem.
