Law for the Elephant: Property and Social Behavior on the Overland Trail
For most of their journey, travelers on the overland trail to California in the 1840s and 1850s were beyond the reach of the law and its enforcers, the police and the courts. Yet, not only did the law play a large role in life on the trail, it was a law hardly distinguishable from the one the emigrants had left behind. John Phillip Reid demonstrates how seriously overlanders regarded the rights of property and personal ownership when they went west as he explores their diaries, letters, and...
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"Reid has been incredibly imaginative in discovering the sources for law on the overland trail, and his pioneering work is likely to open up an entirely new field in the study of the American legal experience. This is a splendid and marvelously readable book."—Stanley N. Katz, Princeton University
IllustrationsForeword1Seeing the Elephant: Introduction32Providing for the Elephant: The Burden of Property313Replenishing the Elephant: Property and Survival534Trading the Elephant: The Dynamics of Transfer915Selling the Elephant: The Contours of Transfer1096Knowing the Elephant: Distinguishing Property Rights1277Sharing the Elephant: The Burden of Concurrent Ownership1578Dividing the Elephant: The Separation of Concurrent Property1839Starving the Elephant: The Value of Property21710Claiming the Elephant: The Irrelevance of Possession25111Rights to the Elephant: The Concept of Ownership26512Owning the Elephant: The Concept of Property28513Title to the Elephant: The Habit of Property30514Respecting the Elephant: The Behaviorism of Property335Acknowledgments365Copyright Acknowledgments367Short-Title List375Index409
