Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly vol. 1.djvu/145

Rh did not become owners of land in severalty. Divided into tribes they contended with each other for the possession of certain countries because they were born there, or because it held the graves of their fathers. To "sleep with their fathers," or to continue to breathe the air which had borne abroad over the land the sacred ashes of their ancestors was with them a religion. The same earth furnished pasturage for the animals upon whose milk and flesh they subsisted, and nourished the fruits they found most agreeable. Hence they contended for its use against the covetousness of other tribes. The long and persistent war carried on by the descendants of Abraham to regain the land which held his burial place is an example of the ancient sentiment of ownership in land, a sentiment which we honor most highly under the name of patriotism. Metes and bounds could not be closely observed in a pastoral country, neither could they in a wooded one where game furnished the chief subsistence of the inhabitants. Everything depended upon the strength and valor of the predatory and the resisting tribes, and the division of lands acquired in war was settled, as in this world most things still are settled, by the most active securing to themselves the most desirable places.

The common desire to save from invasion the country of their birth, and the necessity of captains in war, led to chieftainship, and chieftainship led to the accumulation of such wealth as the conquered lands afforded, whether in flocks and herds, in other subsistence, or in such personal property as the subjugated nation possessed. War makes a people nomadic in their habits. The young and the strong were trained to fight, the feebler remained in such homes as they were able to maintain in a state of continual dread of the enemy. The cultivation of the ground at this stage of civilization