ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the primary and ultimate resource of every productive system, savage or civilized, land. The village land is administered, that is, held in trust and apportioned—in Nupe terminology 'owned'—by the chief. The grant of land to strangers never includes the trees growing on the farm-land. Land can be borrowed only for limited periods, as a rule for periods from two to five years, that is, in order to help a temporary shortage of land. But land can be acquired by the method of lease for life or of tenantship for an indefinite period. The arrangement between the landlord and the bara whom he settles on his land is the same metayer system which also regulates the tenantship of the free peasant who accepts clientship in order to obtain land. The possession of land is only one instance of the joint, 'corporate', rights which characterize the two analogous groups.
