They do in Civilization, things developed differently in this alternate reality. Also untrue, they had land they claimed was their tribe's and territory. They just didn't have individual landholders afaik.
That´s basically what happened, isn´t it? Not quite. Land couldn´t be bought, i.e. they didn´t have an economic concept of land ownership. But land could be fought over, so you might state they had a political concept of land ownership.
They certainly did have concepts of property ownership, just not European concepts of private property ownership. Tribes held land and defended it to the death - they understood collective ownership quite well. Usufructory right to property was also understood. A family that had been hunting or farming a particular tract had rights to do so exclusively, especially among the agrarian groups like the Iroqouis. They use the land, therefore, it is theirs to use - exclusively. European property concepts are more complex. One could own land not only without ever having used it, but perhaps without ever having seen it. One could transfer ownership, perhaps to someone who is not physically using the land and never will. One could divide the bundle of property rights - and grant right of use or habitation for a fee (ie rent) while retaining ownership. All of this was largely incompatible with native ways of thinking about property, because right derived from use, not from a saleable deed issued by authority of a sovereign government.
I don't think America did from 4000BC until...the 1600s? I like seeing Native Americans build an empire: they more than deserve the opportunity to cut American down to size
Now, I believe that historical and political context and concepts should be applied to Civilization V, but history and politics do need to be applied correctly or just not at all. Even when the whites usurped Native American land, they acknowledged that the Native Americans did indeed own that land -- they just believed that Native Americans were wasting that land without private ownership or an agricultural system that was on the same scale as the one emerging in Europe, New England, and the South at the beginning of the 1600s. For those reasons, we can see why Communists always keep going back and pointing out the Native American story as a counterexample against Capitalism, but nobody ever said that Native American tribes never actually existed -- or else there wouldn't have been any wars or conflicts within Native American groups, now, would there?
