Law for the Elephant: Property and Social Behavior on the Overland Trail

by John Phillip Reid

For most of their journey, travelers on the overland trail to California in the 1840s and 1850s were beyond the reach of the law and its enforcers, the police and the courts. Yet, not only did the law play a large role in life on the trail, it was a law hardly distinguishable from the one the emigrants had left behind. John Phillip Reid demonstrates how seriously overlanders regarded the rights of property and personal ownership when they went west as he explores their diaries, letters, and memoirs, giving an unusually rich and vivid picture of life on the overland trail.

Genres: Law

448 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1980

About the author

John Phillip Reid is Russell D. Niles Professor of Law Emeritus at New York University.

Reviews

[Sean Rosenthal]

"[L]uck had much to do with how an individual fared on the overland trail [from the East to California in the 1840s & 50s]. But if we speak of luck and ownership, we must keep in mind the fact that the luck was in the condition and durability of the property, not in the ownership. Ownership was an absolute, not a variable . . .

"[P]ressures against traditional concepts were great on the overland trail - no police, no social permanency, strangers passing never expecting to meet again, stalked by fear of hunger, fear of exposure, and fear of being left behind. Yet if we search the records, there is but one indication that the emigrants may have departed from common law and formulated customary law. Ironically, it may underline, not disprove, the theory that behavior was determined by remembered rules. It was the possible alteration of company property into personal property by prescriptive use."

-John Phillip Reid, Law for the Elephants: Property and Social Behavior on the Overland Trail

Property rights are a social construct that function fairly well without states in many of the least likely of circumstances. Whatever their merits or demerits, state-provided services like the police are most certainly not needed for people to have property rights, as confirmed repeatedly throughout history.