The savage and barbarous groups which in Morgan's classification would
fall under the head of _societas_ have nevertheless a clear conception
of their ownership of the tribal lands which they use in common. This
idea is probably of very primitive origin, arising from the association
of a group with its habitat, whose food supply they regard as a
monopoly.[83] This is true even of migratory hunting tribes. They claim a
certain area whose boundaries, however, are often ill-defined and
subject to fluctuations, because the lands are not held by permanent
occupancy and cultivation. An exceptional case is that of the Shoshone
Indians, inhabiting the barren Utah basin and the upper valleys of the
Snake and Salmon Rivers, who are accredited with no sense of ownership
of the soil. In their natural state they roved about in small, totally
unorganized bands or single families, and changed their locations so
widely, that they seemed to lay no claim to any particular portion. The
hopeless sterility of the region and its poverty of game kept its
destitute inhabitants constantly on the move to gather in the meager
food supply, and often restricted the social group to the family.[84]
Here the bond between land and tribe, and hence between the members of
the tribe, was the weakest possible.

[Sidenote: Land bond in hunter tribes.]

The usual type of tribal ownership was presented by the Comanches,
nomadic horse Indians who occupied the grassy plains of northern Texas.
They held their territory and the game upon it as the common property of
the tribe, and jealously guarded the integrity of their domain.[85] The
chief Algonquin tribes, who occupied the territory between the Ohio
River and the Great Lakes, had each its separate domain, within which it
shifted its villages every few years; but its size depended upon the
power of the tribe to repel encroachment upon its hunting grounds.
Relying mainly on the chase and fishing, little on agriculture, for
their subsistence, their relations to their soil were superficial and
transitory, their tribal organization in a high degree unstable.[86]
Students of American ethnology generally agree that most of the Indian
tribes east of the Mississippi were occupying definite areas at the time
of the discovery, and were to a considerable extent sedentary and
agricultural. Though nomadic within the tribal territory, as they moved
with the season in pursuit of game, they returned to their villages,
whi