American history Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words - 5

American history - Essay Example A good understanding of a country’s political culture can help determine the way its government is run, how governmental decisions are made, and more importantly how assets such as land are divided among citizens and put into use. In Native American societies, land was owned collectively by the tribe. An individual had the right to a particular parcel of land only as long as he could put it into proper use lest it went back to communal ownership. The issue of land ownership as a private property which could be bought or sold did not exist. It was until the European settlers brought with them the new ideas of fee simple land ownership, freehold tenure as well as property deeds. The private land ownership and the liberty to do whatever individual aspirations with one’s land were, and still are, essential to the founding values of the US. The agrarian and industrial revolutions led to the unprecedented population growth in the original states. Everyone was acutely aware of the great potential benefits that could be offered by lands. It can be coined to the colonial experience in the issues of land ordinances, they had the knowledge on what it means if an individual would be mandated to work on a piece of land (Ronald 56). The definition of property boundary line would also provide a sense of security in the land ownership, by minimizing the likelihood of boundary disputes. Moreover, it would give the government a number of well-defined plots of land for future developments. This instigated Thomas Jefferson to design a system of surveying the lands that might avoid the pitfalls of earlier methods of determining boundaries. The earlier methods did not define the mechanism by which the land would become states, or how the territories would be governed or settled first before they become states (Brückner 191). Histor ically Public Land Survey as a method has been used to survey and spatially identify land parcels before description of ultimate ownership