Today, we are bombarded with claims that the lands of the Fifty States (i.e., the United States) are “stolen lands.” And demands that the only option is to give the “LandBack.” (An organization based in South Dakota, demanding that the Black Hills be returned to the “Great Sioux Nation” (a/k/a the Seven Council Fires, consisting of the Dakota, Nakota, and Lakota people.) Which would, of course, mean that millions of people who now own and live on that land must go somewhere. For example, “go back where they came from.”

Obviously, as lovers of liberty, we understand that going around stealing people’s land is a heinous act: an act of aggression that is immoral and therefore should be punished by government and not committed by government. Even by government “of, for, and by the people.”

But we detect just a few problems with the proposed solution of returning hundreds of millions of acres of land to the descendants (and presumably heirs) of millions of people who owned that land from 400 to 150 or so years ago. And forcing more millions of people who live on that land (and think they own it) to go someplace else – where back where they came from or somewhere else.

That is no doubt too big a subject to do more than touch on. But we can point out a few things.

Start with this cartoon online:

Now, the cartoon clearly is oriented towards “old Southerners” who want the carpetbaggers (well, the descendants of carpetbaggers) and the snowbirds, yuppies, Gex-Xers, etc. who have migrated from the Northeast and the Rust Belt to the South to “go back.” And of course, therefore give the land they currently own in the Southern States back. To someone. But who?

What a can of worms!

Because, of course, those sons and daughters (or great-great-great-great of each) of the Confederacy, and the original four British colonies from which the eleven Confederate States came, of course came to land that was occupied by various AmerInd nations. To name just a few: Creek, Cherokee, Choctaw, and Chickasaw. The same thing happened in the Northern States, and then in the Pacific States and the States in “Flyover Country” – the Great Plains and Rocky Mountains.

But as the cartoon points out, there is more to the story than “Columbus was an evil monster and started the process by which Europeans and Brits poured into “Turtle Island” (North America) and committed genocide and stole the land from its rightful owners and inhabitants.” Much more.

It was a process that started centuries before there were “United States” – and even before there were British colonies in North America.

While we have historical records and documentation of what went on in the Great Plains and Rockies, most historians are fairly certain the same process took place all across the American continents and islands around it.

Whomever first settled the land around here, after the Great Flood (or when and whatever events triggered migration from the Old World to the New World way back when), we are fairly sure that very few if any of their offspring, hundreds of generations later, are the ones that stood on that land to greet the Norse, Spanish, French, etc. explorers and settlers (exploiters!!!) centuries later. Oh, there might have been intermarriage (or rape) and so some of the DNA in those people just 500 years ago might have come from the landowners of 4,000 (or so) years before that.

But over the centuries, that land has changed hands a lot. Because we here at TPOL know the stories and history of the Great Plains and the Rockies the best, we’ll use that example.

The Lakota (“Sioux,” some of whom are the “LandBack” movement and very vocal in demanding that “stolen land” be given back) have only been in the Black Hills and South Dakota and Wyoming west of the Missouri River since the mid-1700s. (In fact, it is highly likely that French explorers made it to West River of the Dakotas first.) Before the Lakota conquered (stole) the land, especially the Black Hills, the Cheyenne people owned it. But even they were not the original owners of the Black Hills and Badlands and Plains around them. Before the Cheyenne were in South Dakota, there were Kiowa and Comanche people. And the Comanche, at least, were originally part of the Shoshone people who broke off from the other Shoshone in the northern Rockies. And apparently drove the Kiowa and other tribes out to the south and east.

At the same time, or a few years later, the Ahkota (Lakota, Nakota, and Dakota) were reportedly being driven out of lands that they occupied in what are places like Illinois and Indiana and even Ohio and Kentucky. So, as the cartoon implies, this is a pattern that has been going on for thousands of years. And little different from what went on in the British Isles or Europe, Asia, and Africa! And very little “voluntary agreement to sell and buy” or treaties or brotherly love.

So who really “deserves” the land that is taken back? And at least in a legal sense, once more stolen? For the Black Hills, is it the Lakota? Or the Cheyenne? Or perhaps the Comanche and the Kiowa before them? Or someone else?

To put it simply, two wrongs do not make a right. Nor do ten. But politics, and powerful government and money, all make things like this massive headaches and excuses for war and more.

Tomorrow for St. Patrick’s Day, we will look more at history, land, theft, and more!