Warring Over Stolen Land

THE people had been free to go traveling north and south for a thousand years, traveling as they pleased, then suddenly white priests had announced smuggling as a mortal sin because smuggling was stealing from the government.

Zeta wondered if the priests who told the people smuggling was stealing had also told them how they were to feed themselves now that all the fertile land along the rivers had been stolen by white men.... Stealing from the "government"? What "government" was that? Mexico City? ... Washington, D.C.? How could one steal if the government itself was the worst thief?

There was not, and there never had been, a legal government by Europeans anywhere in the Americas. Not by any definition, not even by the Europeans' own definitions and laws. Because no legal government could be established on stolen land. Because stolen land never had clear title. Zeta could recite Yoeme's arguments and crazed legal theories better and better as time went by. All the laws of the illicit governments had to be blasted away. Every waking hour Zeta spent scheming and planning to break as ma ny of their laws as she could.

War had been declared the first day the Spaniards set foot on Native American soil, and the same war had been going on ever since: the war was for the continent called the Americas.