Re: Quarantines may be justified

At 09:03 AM 4/20/03 -0500, Harmon Seaver wrote:

So the native americans here before 1492 weren't free? They did,

of

course, have private property -- whatever they could carry with them -- but the land was held in common. The idea that individuals could "own" land was not known to them.

This is a white fallacy. If you caught someone hunting on your familial land, you might initiate violence against them. Within the family, resources were shared, but in dealing with other clans, violence certainly occurred. You think some of them lived in fortresses for yucks? Talk to an anthropologist some time. Territoriality is as old as amphibians.