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Impearls: HIC 2.09: Ownership of land

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Earthdate 2005-11-12

Ownership of land   by A. L. Kroeber

Up to a mile or more from the river, all land of any value for hunting was privately owned; back of this, there were no claims, nor was there much hunting.  It may be that deer were scarce away from the river; but more likely, the private tracts in the aggregate represented accessibility and convenience to the game rather than exhaustive control of its total supply.  It may be added that the Yurok country, being well timbered, was poor in small game, deer and elk being the principal objects of the chase.  Rich men often held three or four inherited tracts, poor people perhaps a single one, others none.  Poachers were shot.  A small creek near Weitspus is named Otl-amo, “person caught,” because, according to tradition, a poacher was there taken in a deer snare.  A wounded animal could be pursued anywhere.  It belonged to the hunter, and the owner of the tract in which it fell had no claim upon it.

Certain prairies on the Bald Hills, valuable for seed gathering, belonged to Weitspus and Wahsekw families, who had bought them from the Chilula.

A Weitspus man who had killed a fellow resident of that village fled to the Coast Yurok, bought himself a small stream that flowed into the ocean not far from Osagon Creek, and made his home there.  This case is doubly illuminating.  It shows the personal heterogeneity of the larger villages, and demonstrates that land was bought and sold for abode and asylum — a rather unusual feature in American Indian society.

The ownership of house sites is discussed elsewhere.



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