Was there some sort of native American title office that the European settlers missed? Was every square mile of what would become the United States occupied, used, and accounted for?
The English were brutal, no doubt about it, but the French, for one, lived for a couple of centuries side by side with many native peoples in frontier areas without forcefully taking land and treating the natives as a population of people to be dealt with on an equal footing. There was plenty of room for everyone and huge areas of unclaimed, un-worked, un-owned land in every meaningful sense of the word.
And indeed those tribes very much had land title offices, legal system and even constitutions echoing the US document.[2]
[1]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Five_Civilized_Tribes
[2]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cherokee#Treaties_and_governmen...
Actually, here in Scotland there is a fairly widespread recognition (apart, perhaps, from some large landowners) that a lot of land was acquired by rather dubious means. I think this provides a fairly decent justification for the "right to roam" we have over most land.
The reason this is a deeply interesting topic is because there are exceptionally strong claims to property rights made in the US and that same property was almost entirely all stolen in the recent past.
And because one gets such inconsistencies as claiming the theft occurred in the "mists of time" when, by definition, the constitution itself is further back in those same mists of time.
And the logically absurd (and patently false claims) that one can't locate a parcel's original possessor therefore some arbitrary purchaser down an illicit chain can make nearly unlimited exclusive claim to owning it.
And of course endless use of tu quoque.
So the authors intention is an utterly uninteresting red herring. It is a remarkable opportunity for thoughtful people to examine their own inconsistent views. The rest will simply shut their ears and convince themselves their is no reason for contemplation.