Page:Lippincotts Monthly Magazine-40.djvu/751

Rh and demanded a redistribution of what was once the land of all the tribe.

Every one in the tribe, whether monopolist or socialist, traces all titles back to the eponymous hero of the clan, the philanthropist, John McDonogh, who bequeathed his wealth to found the agricultural school. "Our farm," as the clansmen call it, is "ours" because "he left it to us;" a title none the less valid in their eyes because it rests upon a fiction. "Superior and malefic forces, embodied in principals, teachers, and overseers, may prevent the full enjoyment of our rights, but we nevertheless have from our founder a free range over fields and woods, and we still own the wild fruit and the game." Such might have been the course of a clansman's reflections years ago, before individualism had made the conquest of tribal feeling which it has now accomplished. In the early days every privilege, every right of property that any tribesman enjoyed was equally free to all the rest. The rabbits scampering through the undergrowth were the game of all; all had a common of venery in the woods; and all felt equal interest and zeal in expelling the neighboring aliens who sometimes made incursions into the "common mark," to trap or to hunt. Hence, during the earliest year of the settlement every tribesman felt free to set his box-trap where he pleased, scented with an alluring onion. But during the first year the population grew with a rapidity even greater than that maintained by Malthus; and the success of the first trappers tempted an even greater number to embark in the pursuit than the increase of population alone would account for. Therefore the time was not long before the traps became more numerous and more closely placed than an eager trapper could approve. In one of the first seasons it seems to have been agreed upon by common consent that no two traps belonging to different owners should be put very close together. The feeling that caused this step was much the same as that which acted in forming the customs that govern the gathering of the walnuts,—namely, a sentiment of respect for the title of the first comer. The trapper who had labored to make his heavy box-trap, to carry it painfully over rough fields and through tangled briers to set it in the spot chosen by the aid of all his skill in reading the signs of the woods, should not be subjected to the loss of all this work by some laggard who might feel inclined to put a trap at the same place, which his own unaided sagacity would never have selected as a fitting one. There was nothing fanciful in the idea of the loss of game by undue proximity of the traps. The trappers knew that it was the habit of the "Jim Dink," as they familiarly called him, to move through his haunts along well-marked paths; and they took advantage of this peculiarity in deciding where to put their traps, which they always placed in the paths that seemed to be most frequented. A second trap put in the path with the first would of course stop a rabbit moving towards it from that side, and would thus interfere with the catch of the trapper who earliest occupied the ground. Consequently it was the general feeling that a tribesman who had set a trap in an unoccupied place was entitled to the undisturbed use of a circle about it some forty or more yards in diameter.

The adoption of this very reasonable proposition was the first step