Posted by Ed Kiser on February 05, 2013 at 12:32:27 user Kisered.
WHCH23
"The trouble is," said Captain Flint, "that in these
days everything belongs to someone, even the North
Pole."
As we read through these Lakes Stories, we hear of
the Charcoal Burners, the Billies, move their camp and
their burning activity to be in various parts of that
district. And apparently, there are times that they
wind up back on some previous campsite used some years
before.
I don't think the Billies owned those forests they
did their work in, but somebody owned the trees they
were cutting down to process into charcoal. If I were
an owner of some wooded area, I would be a bit
distressed to find somebody had moved in my area and
was chopping down my trees.
Who owned the trees the Billies were chopping down?
Did the the land owner get any compensation for
having his trees so used in this fashion?
In a similar line of thought - the copper mine that
was discovered in Pigeon Post was on High Tops. Who
owned that land? Is not that mine therefor the
property of that land owner? Yet seems our prospectors
needed to take it to be so important that they "stake
their claim" to avoid "jumpers" - as if they had all
the rights to the mine, and any product that came out
of that mine. Even after Captain Flint had returned
home and seemed delighted in what they had discovered,
and subsequently with Slater Bob actually started
professionally extracting copper from that mine, there
never seemed to be any understanding of an agreement
with the true owner of that property. At least, not
that we were made aware of anyway.
We, the readers, are not necessarily pvivy to private
negotiaions among the natives. Captain Flint and the
Boat Builder stepped out of sight to make the financial
arrangements to fix Swallow. Mrs. Blackette went into
the farmhouse and talked with Mrs. Tyson about the
camping arrangements for the prospectors. So the
content of their native agreements were not part of our
information, as it all took place "off stage" so to
speak, as such was not of any inportance or concern to
our chilldhood friends. So perhaps there were
financial agreements made between the natives that we,
from the children's perspective, remained blissfully
ignorant of.
Even the Dogs' Home - there was some concern as to if
anyone was currently using it, but there was no
question as to who really OWNED it. It turned out that
there had been a previous "user" which was Jackie, but
then, he was just making use of someone else's property
just as our Picts were likewise doing, with no
reference as to legal ownership. It was just there, so
they used it.
Even Wildcat Island was owned by somebody, but our
friends just made use of it, and nobody seemed to be
indignant at their presumptiveness in just moving in
and making a campsite of that island. But I do wonder
if someone were to go to Peel Island (aka Wildcat) and
pitch a tent and make a campfire, if perhaps it would
not take all that long before some authority
representing the rights of the real owner would come
along and turn out such squatters immediately. But
such difficulties would only make the story more
complicated by bringing the natives into the picture,
and we would not want that. So the natives remained
blissfully ignorant of their island being so used as a
campsite and said nothing to the contrary. At least,
it worked for them in our fictious story anyway.
And that is the nice thing about fiction - you can
just ignore the Natives, and they will remain offstage.
Unless invited, of course...
Ed Kiser, Kentucky