Political Economy for the People

Though, in this stage of society, no individual had an exclusive right to any portion of the soil, except during his temporary occupation of it, yet the whole community claimed property in the large district which constituted their hunting-ground, and which had its boundaries assigned by rivers, mountains, and other physical marks. These claims were firmly maintained, and constituted the most frequent cause of war with neighboring tribes. They have always been recognized by the United States, and have been the foundation of many a treaty of cession by the Indians for large pecuniary considerations.

In this, the hunter state, the means of subsistence being wholly or principally dependent on the chase, are very precarious; and there are probably more instances of extreme suffering from the want of food among the sequestered tribes of Indians than are to be found in the densest districts of China. From the precariousness of subsistence among these tribes, together with the exterminating character of their wars, population increases slowly with them, and, occasionally, not at all. The same circumstances, but for the approach of the white race, might have postponed, to an indefinite period, the transition of the Indian race to a higher stage of social existence. The density of population of hunter tribes is commonly rated at one person to the square mile, or 640 acres; but that of the Indians within the United States has been more nearly one to 1000 acres.

Tribes, in this stage of civilization, living on the coast, or prolific lakes and rivers, sometimes derive their principal subsistence from fish. Such tribes have nearly the same characteristics as those who live by hunting, except, perhaps, that their supplies of food are less precarious. Here began the noble art of navigation, by which the rude canoe has, after a thousand improvements, grown to the floating fortress of one hundred guns, the magnificent merchant ship, and lastly, the steamer which flies over the water like a bird through the air.

The Pastoral state is generally regarded as the second stage of civilization. It probably originated in this way: when the population of a hunter tribe had continued to increase, notwithstanding its inherent obstacles, and it pressed more heavily on the means of subsistence, the sagacity of some individual, or other fortunate accident, first showed the practicability of taming and domesticating some of the wild animals of the forest, by which man would provide for himself a farther supply of food. The first instance would soon be followed by others, until the practice of breeding and rearing animals whose flesh, or milk, or skins afforded him sustenance or raiment, became the general occupation of all. In this way, the means of subsistence ceased to be precarious, and could support ten, or perhaps twenty times as many as the same district could support by hunting.

By some such process, man won from their original wildness the cow, the sheep, the goat, the hog; and of birds, that most useful species which supplies us with eggs and chickens, and which, from its excellence, is called "the fowl," ducks, and geese, to which America has added the turkey, furnishing man with food equally palatable and nourishing; and, to serve other useful purposes, the camel, the horse, the elephant, and the dog, which prefers the society of man to that of his own species, and which remains faithful to him when deserted by all other friends.