Steven Rinella

We can look at these moments in American history and be like, Oh, this is brutal.

And Oh, this is difficult, which don't get me wrong.

It is, but this is how land has been taken and fought over.

in the old world and everywhere else.

But part of what happened with land speculation is you had giant European corporations like the Dutch Holland Land Company.

They would pay somebody like Dan McQuay to just go west, build a log cabin,

lay claim, put down markers basically, to the rights for that forest so that he could log it.

If there were native peoples there, see if you can figure out a way to say, hey, can we cut down some of these trees?

Is that cool?

Sometimes that works out.

Sometimes it turns into a confrontation.

Um, so that's like the, that's like the massive scale.

That's like, I'm sorry to use like modern terms, but like, that's like the Facebook, that's like the Google, that's like the big scale stuff was you literally had European governments, East Indian training companies, something like that's like the big, on the much smaller scale, you had this desire, right?

For westward expansion and settlers.

And so the idea was if you were to plant the land, and I can't remember the exact number, but there was like X number of trees.

It was called the donation tract.

Okay.

First off, I'm so glad you're here.

So that was perfect because that's correct.

Second, that's what makes Chapman such an interesting person.