From “An Indigenous Peoples’ History of the United States” by Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz
The land won through North American bloodshed was not necessarily conceived in terms of particular parcels for a farm that would be passed down through generations. Most of the settlers who fought for it kept moving on nearly every generation. In the South many lost their holdings to land companies that then sold it to planters seeking to increase the size of their slave-worked plantations. Without the unpaid forced labor of enslaved Africans, a farmer growing cash crops could not compete on the market. Once in the hands of settlers, the land itself was no longer sacred, as it had been for Indigenous. Rather, it was private property, a commodity to be acquired and sold – every man a possible king, or at least wealthy.