. The old No Man's Land between the Ohio and
Tennessee was a line of least resistance for the expanding Colonies, who
here poured in a tide of settlement between the northern and southern
Indians, just as later other pioneers filtered into the vague border
territory of weak tenure between the Choctaws and Creeks, and there on
the Tombigby, Mobile and Tensas rivers, formed the nucleus of the State
of Alabama.[361]

[Sidenote: Politico-economic significance of the waste boundary.]

This untenanted hem of territory surrounding so many savage and
barbarous peoples reflects their superficial and unsystematic
utilization of their soil, by reason of which the importance of the land
itself and the proportion of population to area are greatly reduced. It
is a part of that uneconomic and extravagant use of the land, that
appropriation of wide territories by small tribal groups, which
characterizes the lower stages of civilization, as opposed to the
exploitation of every square foot for the support of a teeming humanity,
which marks the most advanced states. Each stage puts its own valuation
upon the land according to the return from it which each expects to
get. The low valuation is expressed in the border wilderness, by which a
third or even a half of the whole area is wasted; and also in the
readiness with which savages often sell their best territory for a song.

For the same reason they leave their boundaries undefined; a mile nearer
or farther, what does it matter? Moreover, their fitful or nomadic
occupation of the land leads to oscillations of the frontiers with every
attack from without and every variation of the tribal strength within.
Their unstable states rarely last long enough in a given form or size to
develop fixed boundaries; hence, the vagueness as to the extent of
tribal domains among all savage peoples, and the conflicting land claims
which are the abiding source of war. Owing to these overlapping
boundaries--border districts claimed but not occupied--the American
colonists met with difficulties in their purchase of land from the
Indians, often paying twice for the same strip.

[Sidenote: Common boundary districts.]

Even civilized peoples may adopt a waste boundary where the motive for
protection is peculiarly strong, as in the half-mile neutral zone of
lowland which ties the rock of Gibraltar to Spain. On a sparsely
populated frontier, where the abundance of land reduces its value, they
may throw the bou