Terminology: Cede or Sell

Over the months of writing this blog, I've gotten a couple of angry comments on entries dealing with treaties where I mention that Natives in this or that treaty ceded land to the federal government.  The commenters object to the term, stating that Natives could never sell land either because it belonged it common to everyone, or all members of a clan, band or tribe.  However, the word choice of cede or cession versus sell is deliberate. 

Merriam-Webster's Online Dictionary defines cede as giving up control of something, where sell is defined as exchanging something for money.  Thus, in that sense, Natives never sold an acre of their land in North America and probably wouldn't have dreamed of doing so.  There's various opinions as to how Natives viewed their land, ranging from Colonial assumptions that they had no sense of property rights to modern ideas that there were some vested property rights in tribal land.  While views of land ownership or property would have differed from tribe to tribe, the best way to understand it is that many Natives believed that the land used by the tribe for agriculture, hunting and the like was communal.  It belonged to either everyone in the particular clan, band or tribe, or it belonged to all people in common.  Thus, it wasn't anyone's place, no matter how powerful or charismatic a leader he might be, to sell the land.  However, there are many forms of property rights, whether communal or individual, and one involves overall control of land.  Certain bands or tribes claimed control of land which constituted their hunting or migration range.  For instance, the Ohio Valley, as we have seen, was the contested hunting range of many tribes, including the Cherokee, Catawba, Shawnee, Lenape/Delaware, Mingo and Iroquois, with the Iroquois claiming overall control of the territory.  Fierce frontier skirmishes broke out when leaders of one tribe ceded, or gave over control of hunting range, and other tribes were neither informed or consulted.  This happened to the Shawnee many times.  Thus, while tribes may not have owned the land in the strict sense that Europeans were familiar with, they did claim control over certain areas and could be formidable if that control was challenged, either by another tribe coming onto the land, or trespassing Settlers.

The treaties which Native leaders felt obligated to sign for a variety of reasons, from personal gain to acceptance of the inevitable, to a basic need to put distance between their people and oncoming Settlers, often involved exchanges such as trade goods, land allotments or annuities and the like.  However, these considerations still did not constitute a traditional sale, even when the monetary payout was specified as per lot or per acre.  What was being bargained for was control or possession of the land, not the actual land itself.  This basic misunderstanding led to tragic results, as some tribes were unable to grasp that they would be required to physically leave the land, or cease hunting and fishing there, or passing through it on annual migrations.  Black Hawk's War in 1832 may have been based on such a misunderstanding. 

For these reasons, this blog uses the word cede or land cession when dealing with treaties, and never the word sell or sale

, in an effort to be more accurate.