Today's Marin Independent Journal features a letter to the editor from Susan Kirsch regarding the use by the YIMBY (Yes In My Backyard) movement of bounties for aquiring property.
Someone should inform the YIMBY movement of the very terrible conotation of the word bounty with regards to the Indian tribes moved from Georgia to the Nations during Andrew Jackson's presidency.
Bounties brings back a rather ugly memory carried by those 'Trail of Tears' survivors who had to move from the Nations (Oklahoma) because of the whites putting bounties on Indian families living on land that might become part of the great Oklahoma Land Rush.
The bounty system continued with discovery of oil in the Nations. Not only were the Indians murdered for their land but for their oil rights which were being mysteriously transferred over to white families.
Ironically, it was J Edgar Hoover's prequel to the FBI that broke up the bounty system and jailed the bounty hunters.
Rick Johnson