“[Daniel] Boone’s early, temporary excursions into the “Land of Tomorrow” [Kentucky] gave him a sense of the beauty and unknown dangers he could expect… The trips also led to property claims on the land by the travelers, in turn prompting a demand for surveyors to record those claims. One such team of surveyors put their lives on the line to parcel off two thousand acres below the Elk River for George Washington, then a representative to the Virginia legislature, and in two other spots recorded seven thousand acres for another legislator, Patrick Henry, who was ready to carve out a large piece of property in a place unknown to him. Washington and Henry, like other influential politicos, believed they could get rich from pushing into the territory.
“Years earlier, the British had forbidden private purchase of lands from American Indians such as the one Henderson engineered, having cited ‘the great dissatisfaction of the said Indians’ involved in such transactions.” [ — emphasis added] — excerpt from Chapter 1 of The Taking of Jemima Boone: Colonial Settlers, Tribal Nations, and the Kidnap that Shaped America, by Matthew Pearl (HarperCollins, 2021).
“said Indians” didn’t think anyone could own land…how could anyone own something they never made? Next thing, someone might think they could own people…