Hunting claims.—­The great body of the land within the area mapped which was occupied by agricultural tribes, and all the land outside it, was held as a common hunting ground, and the tribal claim to territory, independent of village sites and corn fields, amounted practically to little else than hunting claims.  The community of possession in the tribe to the hunting ground was established and practically enforced by hunting laws, which dealt with the divisions of game among the village, or among the families of the hunters actually taking part in any particular hunt.  As a rule, such natural landmarks as rivers, lakes, hills, and mountain chains served to mark with sufficient accuracy the territorial tribal limits.  In California, and among the Haida and perhaps other tribes of the northwest coast, the value of certain hunting and fishing claims led to their definition by artificial boundaries, as by sticks or stones.[5]

    [Footnote 5:  Powers, Cont.  N.A.  Eth. 1877, vol. 3, p. 109:  Dawson,
    Queen Charlotte Islands, 1880, p. 117.]

Such precautions imply a large population, and in such regions as California the killing of game upon the land of adjoining tribes was rigidly prohibited and sternly punished.

As stated above, every part of the vast area included in the present map is to be regarded as belonging, according to Indian ideas of land title, to one or another of the Indian tribes.  To determine the several tribal possessions and to indicate the proper boundary lines between individual tribes and linguistic families is a work of great difficulty.  This is due more to the imperfection and scantiness of available data concerning tribal claims than to the absence of claimants or to any ambiguity in the minds of the Indians as to the boundaries of their several possessions.

Not only is precise data wanting respecting the limits of land actually held or claimed by many tribes, but there are other tribes, which disappeared early in the history of our country, the boundaries to whose habitat is to be determined only in the most general way.  Concerning some of these, our information is so vague that the very linguistic family they belonged to is in doubt.  In the case of probably no one family are the data sufficient in amount and accuracy to determine positively the exact areas definitely claimed or actually held by the tribes.  Even in respect of the territory of many of the tribes of the eastern United States, much of whose land was ceded by actual treaty with the Government, doubt exists.  The fixation of the boundary points, when these are specifically mentioned in the treaty, as was the rule, is often extremely difficult, owing to the frequent changes of geographic names and the consequent disagreement of present with ancient maps.  Moreover, when the Indian’s claim to his land had been admitted by Government, and the latter sought to acquire a title through voluntary cession by actual purchase, land assumed a value to the Indian never attaching to it before.