would be too glib and easy to say that the indigenous peoples who sold him the land didn’t understand private property. As Arizona State law professor Robert Miller makes clear, the people likely did have a fully functional concept of property “exclusivity.” But we would probably call the land deal a “lease” not a “purchase.” In his book Law in American History, University of Virginia law professor G. Edward White makes the case that the native Lenape people were “not relinquishing the island, but simply welcoming the Dutch as additional occupants.” It was the colonizers who didn’t understand
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