LVI BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY 
placed in the hands of Dr Cyrus Thomas, who was commis- 
sioned to bring the schedules and maps up to date, to prepare 
a general introduction, and to revise the material in the light of 
later history. In this task Dr Thomas, like Mr Royce in the 
earlier stages of the work, was courteously given access to 
records, and otherwise assisted by the Indian and Land offices. 
The tabulation is brought up to 1895. 
The views of primitive men, like the American aborigines, 
with respect to land tenure are essentially unlike the views 
prevailing in civilization, especially in that advanced culture 
in which individual land tenure is customary. To the primi- 
tive man, land is a free and common possession, like water in 
more advanced culture, and like air in current thought; each 
tribe, indeed, recognized its range, but did not regard the land 
as an element, much less a basis, of value; and within the tribe 
the interest in the range was: common and indivisible. This 
distinction in fundamental views of land tenure has always 
formed one of the most serious obstacles in the way of har- 
monious association between peoples of unlike culture grade; 
and much of the strife between Caucasian and native on 
American soil has grown out of the failure of each to grasp or 
even to perceive the fundamental principles of the other. 
Accordingly, the history of the acquisition of lands by white 
men may be regarded as a history of the slow acquisition 
of the first principles of civilized land tenure on the part of 
the red men; and there is, perhaps, no more striking mark of 
the intellectual progress of the Indian through contact with the 
Caucasian than that afforded by the now fairly common 
instances of the acceptance of land ownership in severalty. 
The essential difference in fundamental ideas concerning land 
tenure between white men and red should be constantly borne 
in mind in dealing with the motives and considerations of land 
cession on the part of the Indians. 
Reviewing the history of America’s acquisition of lands from 
the Indians in the light of the fundamental differences in view 
between the two peoples, it becomes evident that despite the 
pitiably frequent cases of personal and temporary injustice to 
the weaker race, the general policy has been guided by a deep- 
