Session 4: Owning the land: Locke, deeds and the Walking Purchase

Read one step, do it, then move on.

Step 1

Recap check

What is the Mayflower Compact?
Who signed it?
Who was not part of it?

Answer key

An agreement creating a civil body politic, 1620.
Forty-one men on the Mayflower.
Women, servants, the Wampanoag.

Step 2

Objectives

Contrast two ideas of land: shared use and private property
Read Locke's argument critically

Step 3

Documents

Key document

For many Native nations, land was used according to the seasons and shared by the community. In English law, land became property when it was enclosed, farmed and registered. In his Second Treatise of Government (1689), John Locke wrote that labour makes land property, and used America as his example of land in a natural state. In Pennsylvania, William Penn signed treaties with the Lenape, but in 1737 his sons John and Thomas Penn used the Walking Purchase to take perhaps over one million acres in the Delaware and Lehigh valleys.

Read the source: Locke, Second Treatise, Project Gutenberg · Encyclopedia of Greater Philadelphia, Walking Purchase

"Thus in the beginning all the world was America"
John Locke, Second Treatise of Government, section 49

"Pennsylvania officials defrauded the Delaware Indians out of a vast amount of land, perhaps over one million acres"
Encyclopedia of Greater Philadelphia

Step 4

Task 1

Draw a two-column table: land as shared use / land as property.

Step 5

Task 2

How could Locke's theory serve to justify taking Native lands?

Step 6

Task 3

Read about the Walking Purchase: what made it a fraud?

Step 7

Gap-fill worksheet

Word bank: property labour deed Lenape acres

For Locke, turns land into property.
In English law, land was when enclosed and registered.
A is a legal document for land.
The Walking Purchase took land from the .
It covered perhaps over one million .

Answer key

labour
property
deed
Lenape
acres

Step 8

Homework

In 100 words, explain how two different ideas of land led to dispossession. Use one quotation.

Answer key

Model answer: For the Lenape and the Wampanoag, land was shared and used by season. For the English, it became property once farmed and registered. Locke wrote “in the beginning all the world was America”, as if the continent were empty. Settlers used such ideas to claim land, and deeds such as the Walking Purchase of 1737 turned the claim into law.