Indian Land in Seventeenth Century Massachusetts

Land ownership and transfer were important and routine matters within the seventeenth century Massachusetts Anglo-Indian society. From the first decades of English settlement in the Plymouth and Massachusetts colonies to the end of the seventeenth century, norms of landholding were established and then maintained by both the English and the Indians. The seeds of this system of land ownership and transfer were sown by John Winthrop himself before he ever arrived in New England. Starting at different conceptions of landholding and use in the 1630's, Indians and English had forged an important and lasting understanding about this most important asset by the 1670's. Over the course of the seventeenth century, Indians fought to put forth their claims of natural and civil rights to retain their land, while the English gradually accepted a broader view of Indian land rights. Both got peace. King Philip's War, fought in 1675 and 1676, was an intense, short-lived conflict between Indians and English. It did little to alter the ways in which land was held and sold in Massachusetts or Plymouth. In fact, these colonies looked to restore the procedures by which Indians and English held and transferred land in the aftermath of war, rather than to change them. The war strengthened the Anglo-Indian community's faith in the system of stable landholding based on rule of law and due process. At the end of the seventeenth century, Indians continued to hold and use land within Massachusetts and Plymouth and would for years to come. Land as the most important source of wealth for Englishmen in the seventeenth century, was a way to hold and produce wealth. It was also a magnet pulling Puritans to New England. Winthrop reflected in 1629 on the new land that they hoped to settle: Who knows but that God hath provided this place to be a refuge for many whom he meanes to save out of the general destruction. New land was necessary because the land in England was worn out, tired and corrupted; a corruption which had infected man himself: Man, which is the most precious of all creatures, is here more vile and base than the earth they tread upon. Why then should we stand starving here for places of habitation ... in the meane tyme suffer whole countryes as profitable for the use of man, to lye waste without any improvement?, Winthrop asked. Later in this same letter, Winthrop wrote down common objections which had been raised to his plan for colonization. Among them was concern about the legal press of land ownership and land transfer from the Indians, By what warrant have we to take that land, which is and hath been of long tyme possessed of others the sons of Adam? Winthrop's answer to his own hypothetical query is telling, as he set out important legal aspects of landownership for the Puritans: This savage people ruleth over many lands without title or property; for they inclose no ground, neither have they cattell to maintayne it, but remove their dwellings as they have occasion, or as they can prevail against their neighbours. And why may not christians have liberty to go and dwell amongst them in their waste lands and woods (leaving them such places as they have manured for their come) as lawfully as Abraham did among the Sodomites? For God hath given to the sons of men a twofould right to the earth; there is a naturall right and a civil right. The first right was naturall when men held the earth in common, every man sowing and feeding where he pleased: Then, as men and catell increased, they appropriated some parcells of ground by enclosing and peculiar manurance, and this in tyme got them a civil right ... 2dly, There is more than enough for them and us ...4thly, We shall come in with good leave of the natives.1 Winthrop's theory of land ownership was based on the Bible. First of all, he articulated the concept of vacuum domicilium -- the belief that uninhabited land was open to anyone who settled it. To the English, settlement included not only permanent houses, but improvement of the lands in visible ways such as planting or fencing. …