Trespassing: An Inquiry Into the Private Ownership of Land - Review

American Journal of Economics and Sociology, The, April, 1999

John Hanson Mitchell, 1998. Reading, Massachusetts. ISBN 0-201-44214-0. Index.

Nashobah Plantation is a 500-acre patch of land located between the Massachusetts towns of Littleton and Concord with a rich and complex history. It was once the home of the Pawtucket tribe of native American Indians. That land, with its majestic collection of trees, plants, ponds, and wild animals, formed the backdrop for a deeply emotional and in some ways mystical Indian culture. One feature of that Indian culture was how much it relied on the idea of "common property." To remove that feature from the lives and thinking of the native Americans, as happened in the seventeenth-century, was equivalent to cultural genocide. Indeed, our author finds himself harassed and threatened by the absence of the common property norm. Each time he comes to Nashobah Plantation to sit peacefully and communicate with nature, he needs to watch over his shoulder for the "Raging Bull" Morrison, who owns this land, manages the orchards with Jamaican labor, and threatens trespassers with bodily harm.

But how in heaven's name did Nashobah Plantation ever become Morrison's land, both privatized and tyrannized? The answer is precisely in "heaven's name." This transformation took place when the Puritans came to Massachusetts in 1633 and found the Indian way of life with all its dancing and emotionalism quite heathen. John Eliot, the gentle "Apostle to the Indians," zealously worked to convert those heathen to the Christianity of hard work and to the idea that land should not be held in common but in fee simple absolute. By 1654, actual Christian Indian villages were established in what is now called Natick, Massachusetts. Land was deeded to the Indians and the males were expected to cut their hair short, stop dancing, and work that land. Civilization had arrived.

Mitchell explains that the Indian notions of common property were not the caricature of "wild open access" found in some texts, only to be used as a foil against which the management of private property is made to look so much more attractive. Rather, the common property described here - the historical common property of Indian culture - was the one that enriched the everyday lives of the Pawtucket Indians. Ironically, a similar notion of "common property" has spontaneously reemerged today in the minds of many suburban New England homeowners who know little of the Pawtucket Indians but have come to similar emotional longings. The author recounts his experiences with the Friends of Open Space who agitated, petitioned, lobbied, and finally succeeded in getting the town of Littleton to buy a large-sized property not for development, but for conservation.

Unfortunately, most of the Pawtucket Indians are gone without a trace. One notable exception is Squaw Sarah Doublet who deeded Nashobah Plantation over to the Jones family in September of 1736. That deed is recorded at the Middlesex County Registry of Deeds along with the 1686 Survey of Nashobah Plantation. Mitchell reconstructs the set of peculiar circumstances that must have led Sarah Doublet to convey the legacy of her ancestors to the new immigrants. Mitchell's detective work offers surprising insights about the history of this 500-acre piece of land. Each conveyance for dairy fanning, apple orchards, or summer cottages, harks back to the original rifle. In telling the story of this tract of land and its emotional significance, Mitchell tells the story of our time, our culture, and our deeply ambivalent attitude toward the land itself. object is a p