Westward ho . . .

Chapter 10 is an odd one, sandwiched between the discussion of rapid political and economic change and the evolution of the judiciary.

In his chapter 10 comment, Boyes makes the case that the Native American question and the eventual reservation system may have been the result of the lack of property rights that characterized the native American society.

Terry Anderson, PERC and a generation of natural resource economists might take issue with this view. Instead they might argue that property rights regimes did in fact exist in native American society. Moreover, the Ostrom perspective of informal resolutions to conflicts over what may be called the commons may have been common to native American societies of this time.

But beyond this, the Jefferson/Jackson flexible attitude toward treaties with Native Americans might lay the foundation for an argument that the hegemonic white elites of the nascent republic used the rule of law in a selective manner.

That said, the land rush clearly was one that was accelerated by Jefferson's presidential "purchases" and overwhelmed his efforts in the late 18th century Land Ordnances to give a rational and ordered shape to settlement.

This, to me, is a Hayekian story, in which cabin rights, tomahawk rights, and corn rights reflected a set of informal institutional norms that were recognized by the formal institutions including the courts. deSoto actually references this era in American economic history in the Mystery of Capital as an adaptively efficient process that lead to a firm foundation for economic growth and development.