this post was submitted on 14 Feb 2026
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How can there be theft if literally nobody owns anything?
personal property ≠ private property.
no one owned the land, but if someone took all my clothes that would be theft.
They still had private property. You try to take a man's only horse and you think he is going to be okay with it?
They had "personal property", property that is movable and possessable; chattel or personalty.
But they most assuredly did not have "private property,", ownership of immovable, "real property" by non-governmental entities. Who can own a lake or a sky? Obviously that belongs to all of us.
It's a minor phrasing difference but is foundational to out understanding of class inequality.
I'm not an expert, and perhaps it varied by tribe, but I don't think native Americans believed they "owned" horses.
I imagine the mere suggestion is offensive to them.
Ownership is probably the wrong word, but you can't overstate the importance of a horse to a Native American. "He took my horse so I stabbed him" would get a bunch of approving nods.
You know horses aren’t native to North America and were brought over by the Europeans right? Horses are only a brief part of their history.
Horses were in the Americas but went extinct before Europeans reintroduced them. There is significant oral tradition that remembers the importance of horses. How long ago the extinction of horses happened is hotly debated between white and native academics and likely varied widely depending on what part of the Americas you are studying. Scientists keep discovering horse bones that are radiologically dated to more and more recent times. The "official" extinction date has been revised down several times in the last few decades. There is even one highly debated sample that puts the date as little as 1500 years ago. Some native academics are working on genetic testing of wild horses in an attempt to prove American horses never went totally extinct at all.
Based on.....
I was writing a fantasy story with a Cree friend of mine that included realistic representation of Native American culture. We did extensive research to incorporate elements of the Cree, Haudenoshone, and Tlingit mythology and culture derived specifically from non-white sources. I don't have a doctorate or anything, but I know what I'm talking about.
That's neat
Do you have any recollection if the relationship was many-to-many, like "my (group) takes care of these horses, and you aren't in our group" or singular stewardship "this horse and I take care of each other" or something?
IIRC a lot of it depended on the size of the tribe. Smaller ones everyone was basically treated like an extended family group, so everything was very communal. Larger tribes had more in-group/out-group politics, where certain families within the tribe maintained their own family property. People being people, there is sometimes bonding that happens with some animals. A horse or a dog becomes "yours" because of mutual preference and affection, not economics.
"Owned" as the definition we use no, but there definitely was a sense of 'this is not yours, don't use this'. I think the point that the speaker was trying to get across is that between people they considered the same as them there was no ownership. It wasn't all peace and free love but it wasn't being okay with watching a community member starve to death because they're poor and therefore deserve it.
But you still talk about owning a horse. It has a name and temper and it's offensive to attack the bond, just like it would be offensive to "take" a daughter