Primitive Land Tenure

LAND TENURE, PRIMITIVE. For primitive as for modern societies the use of a certain area of the earth's surface "is a primary condition of anything that man can do ; it gives him room for his own actions, for the enjoyment of the heat and the light, the air and the rain which nature assigns to that area, and it determines his distance from and, in a great measure, his rela tions to other things and other persons." (Marshall, Economics of Industry, 1898.) Land tenure is affected by the relative density of population.

Thus, among the Andamanese, Professor Radcliffe Brown found that "an average local group consisted of from 4o to 5o persons of all ages, the average number of local groups to a tribe being about ten. This would give the average extent of country occupied by each local group as about 16 sq.m., but some groups certainly had a larger territory than this, and some had smaller." (Andaman Islanders, 1922.) The areas required by other groups of the food-gatherer type are large. Thus, in Arctic America from 70 to zoo sq.m. are required for the support of the hunters. Pastoral nomads require from 2 to 5 sq.m., and agriculture, in its most intensive form, with rice as the staple of cultivation, will support a population of over f ,000 per square mile. (Census of India, vol. i., 1921.) A factor which affects the density of an agricultural population and the tenure of land is the method of cultivation employed. Communities in Assam, such as the Lusheis, practice extensive cultivation by the jhum, or fire and axe method, which speedily exhausts the resources of an area, and compels migration. There are in that area villages with permanent fields with temporary or jhum cultivation subsidiary thereto. There are also permanent villages with permanent fields, and jhum cultivation in set rota tion. (Hodson, Naga Tribes of Namipur, 1911.) Tenure condi tions deal with temporary dwellers with permanent cultivation.

In communities in Africa and India both pastoralism and agriculture are followed. The relations between the groups prac tising these methods engender problems of land tenure, as do the relations between sections of the community subsisting by hunt ing, and those practising fixed agriculture. A feature of pastoral life is the periodical movement of communities with their flocks and herds, generally over well defined routes to definite areas which by custom they are entitled to exploit.

Simple Forms.

The study, therefore, of land tenure exhibits simple forms only in communities where a single method of eco nomic exploitation secures the food supply, such as the Anda manese and Australian tribes. Among the former, the hunting grounds of a local group belong to the whole group and all the members have an equal right to hunt over it, and the boundaries are generally recognized. In Australia, "from time immemorial— that is, as far back as their native traditions go—the boundaries of the tribes have been where they are now fixed. Within them their ancestors roamed about hunting and performing their cere monies, just as their living descendants do at the present day.

There has never apparently been the least attempt made by one tribe to encroach upon the territory of another. Now and again they may have intertribal quarrels and fights, but there is no such thing as the acquisition of fresh territory." (Spencer and Gillen, Northern Tribes of Australia, Similarly, among the American Indians such as the Creeks, "every individual inhabitant has an equal right to the soil and to hunt and range over its region, except within the jurisdiction of each town or village, which, I believe, seldom extends beyond its habitations and sporting ground. Perhaps the Uches are to be excepted. They claim an exclusive territory by right of contract, and though they have sometimes put the Creeks in mind of this privilege, when their hunters make too free with their hunting grounds, yet the dispute seldom goes further, as the Confederacy are cautious of offending the Uches and yield, to their common interest and safety." (Report, Bureau of American Ethnology for 1924-25, 1928.) Agriculture, Hunting and Pastoralism.—In East Africa the dominance of the Hamitic pastoralists over the earlier agri cultural negroid population brought two sets of interests into rela tionship. Thus, among the Bunyoro, cultivation is avoided by the pastoral people; "it is said to be harmful for the wife of a man belonging to the pastoral clan to till the land, as by doing so, she may injure the cattle." (J. Roscoe, Northern Bantu, 1915.) The king was the sole possessor and disposer of land, which was valued for its pastoral rather than for its agricultural qualities. Nevertheless, care was taken to provide some measure of security of tenure for the agriculturalists.