CHAPTER LV. 
USAGES AND CUSTOMS WITH RESPECT TO LANDS AND TO FOOD 
THE OWNERSHIP OF LANDS IN COMMON. 
Among the Iroquois the tribal domain was held and owned by the tribe 
in common. Individual ownership, with the right to sell and convey in 
fee-simple to any other person, was entirely unknown among them. — It re- 
quired the experience and development of the two succeeding ethnical periods 
to bring mankind to such a knowledge of property in land as its individual 
ownership with the power of alienation in fee-simple implies. No _ per- 
son in Indian life could obtain the absolute title to land, since it was 
vested by custom in the tribe as one body, and they had no conception of 
what is implied by a legal title in severalty with power to sell and convey 
the fee. But he could reduce unoccupied land to possession by cultivation, 
and so long as he thus used it he had a possessory right to its enjoyment 
which would be recognized and respected by his tribe. Gardens, planting- 
lots, apartments in a long-house, and, at a later day, orchards of fruit were 
thus held by persons and by families. Such possessory right was all that 
was needed for their full enjoyment and for the protection of their interest 
in them. A person might transfer or donate his rights to other persons 
of the same tribe, and they also passed by inheritance, under established 
customs, to his gentile kin. This was substantially the Indian system in 
respect to the ownership of lands and apartments in houses among the 
Indian tribes within the areas of the United States and British America in 
the Lower Status of barbarism. In later times, when the State or National 
Government acquired Indian lands, and made compensation therefor, pay- 
ment for the lands went to the tribe, and for improvements to the individ- 
ual who had the possessory right. At the Tonawanda Reservation of the 
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