As I mentioned in my post, Shorto also provides a fascinating discussion about how the European colonists and the native Americans, and I presume indigenous peoples in other parts of the world as well, viewed such land sales. From the perspective of the native Americans, one did not possess land in that way. What the Europeans interpreted as a sale, the Americans interpreted as an exchange, really a treaty, an ongoing relationship. It meant promised protection against other groups. It meant friendship, an alliance, and they could still enter the property, even live on it, after the "sale" was made. Shorto also shows that the native Americans played a role, and were part of, that first European colony that developed around the Hudson River area.