ocial, and political life of the colonists." The
existence of the American frontier with unoccupied land was a potent
force in America, and Frederick Jackson Turner stated in his famous
essay in 1893 that the "Most significant thing about the American
frontier is, that it lies at the hither edge of free land."

Before analyzing the nature of landholding and the land policy that was
adopted in early Virginia, let us examine first the problem that arose
by virtue of the presence of the Indians in North America.

At the time of the settlement of Jamestown in 1607 the area of
present-day Virginia was occupied by Indians of three linguistic stocks:
Algonquin, Siouan, and Iroquoian. Generally speaking, the Algonquins
which included the Powhatan Confederacy inhabited the Tidewater,
reaching from the Potomac to the James River and extending to the
Eastern Shore. The Siouan tribes, including the Monacans and the
Manahoacs, occupied the Piedmont; while the Iroquoian group, containing
the independent Nottoways and Meherrins, partially surrounded the others
in a rough semicircle reaching from the headwaters of the Chesapeake
through the western mountains and back to the coast in the region south
of the James River.

The presence of these tribes in the areas of proposed colonization
confronted the colonizers of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries
with the same problem that has faced imperialists of a later date, the
question of "right and title" to land. The British, like other European
nations, did not recognize the sovereign right of the heathen natives
but claimed a general title to the area by the prevailing doctrine of
right by discovery and later by the generally accepted doctrine of
effective occupation. As stated in the charter to Sir Walter Raleigh in
1584 with essentially the same provision included in the first charter
of Virginia in 1606, the colonizers were authorized to occupy land "not
actually possessed of any Christian Prince, nor inhabited by Christian
People." Over the Indians the British maintained a "limited
sovereignty"; and when acknowledging any claim, they recognized only the
Indian's right of occupation and asserted the "exclusive right" to
extinguish this title which occupancy gave them.

In the first years of the colony not even these tenure rights were
recognized by the British. While a few gifts of land had been made by
the natives and one of these confirmed by the London Company, there was
no a