Spencer Heath Archive

Item 167

Pencil by Heath on3-ring binder paper, Oakton, Virginia

August 8, 1951

     A tribal people can appropriate the gifts of nature, as by hunting and fishing, and to a small extent accumulate. Until more highly organized it cannot create its subsistence or supplies in any place but must wander where they can be found. Until they so act as to produce — to draw forth nature’s powers and gifts — they remain but creatures, and nature the master, not the servant, of mankind.

     They must develop a new kind of cooperation among themselves, a system of exchange, and for this they must be able to hold titles to property separately and individually and not in common as a tribe. That any kind of property may be so held necessitates first that they as individuals hold secure and quiet possession of separate plots of the community land.