Property

To us it is a commodity. To them it was home and larder. To us it implies individual ownership, and as such liable to change hands often. To them it was owned by the community, and as such permanent--no single person’s death, or even a whole family’s death, meant transfer of ownership. To us it is chattel, to be used or abused according to the wish of its owner. To them it was mother, to be managed for the benefit of all. 

To us, trespass implies a kind of personal affront, a violation. To them, trespass meant probably theft of essential food, a matter of life and death, and was a more serious infraction than it is for us. 

To us, property can mean a home base, which we generally leave every day to make a living, and from which we make forays for shopping and for travel.

To them, it means their entire world, for most purposes.

“Shopping,” “work,” travel, and entertainment were all to be found on that property. 

Our property rights are defended by the owner and by a nebulous outside institution called the “law.” 

Their property rights were defended by the whole group, but no one outside the group. 

To us, “raw” land is called “undeveloped” and of minimal worth. 

To them, it was considered fully developed and of infinite worth. 

The only beginnings of communal property (a dirty word in much of American society) in modern California are the public lands, i.e. the State and National Parks and Forests. The similarity is very remote, however, since the “public” does not live on (and live off) the public lands and it is the whole huge citizenry, not a group of 200 or so, that owns each.