American Property, American Violence

Every acre of the United States was owned, at some moment, by someone for the first time. Some like to imagine that first owner as a farmer with a plow and a clear conscience—the homestead, the handshake, the deed. But pull the chain of title back far enough on almost any American ground and the homestead dissolves. What you find at the bottom is a treaty signed under duress, a lottery wheel, a war. The property did not come before the violence. The violence is what made the property.