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Claim clubs, also called actual settlers' associations or squatters' clubs, were a nineteenth-century phenomenon in the American West. Usually operating within a confined local jurisdiction, these pseudo-governmental entities sought to regulate land sales in places where there was little or no legal apparatus to deal with land-related quarrels of any size.〔Bogue, A. (1958) "The Iowa Claim Clubs: Symbol and Substance", ''The Mississippi Valley Historical Review, 45''(2). September. pp. 231〕 Some claim clubs sought to protect squatters, while others defended early land owners.〔Pelzer, L. (1936) ''The Cattlemen's Frontier.'' Glendale, CA: AR. Clark. p. 87.〕 In the twentieth century, sociologists suggested that claim clubs were a pioneer adaptation of democratic bodies on the East Coast, including town halls.〔Hogan, R. (1987) "Carnival and Caucus: A Typology for Comparative Frontier History", ''Social Science History, 11''(2). Summer. p 147.〕 ==Purpose== Claim clubs were essentially designed to "do what politicians refused to do: Make land available to needy settlers."〔Southwestern Social Science Association (1968) ''Social Science Quarterly'', University of Texas. p. 21.〕 Their general purpose was to protect the first settlers to arrive on unclaimed lands, particularly in their rights to speculate and cultivate. With the continuous availability of frontier lands from the 1830s through the 1890s, settlers kept moving west. Each claim club established its own rules of governance and enforcement; however, these were almost always vigilante actions. Period accounts report that in some areas, claim clubs were regarded with "the same majesty of the law of the Supreme Court of the United States."〔Dilke, C.W. (2005) ''Greater Britain: A Record of Travel in English-Speaking Countries During 1866 and 1867.'' Cosimo, Inc. p. 167.〕 East Coast land speculators were prone to roam the recently opened Western United States and select the most desirable spots with the intent to outbid the settler and real claimant when the lands were offered for sale at the Land Office.〔(nd) ("Tidricks in Nineteenth Century America" ). Retrieved 7/19/07.〕 Claim jumpers were also a problem. Generally they sought to be present at a land sale when the first claimant was not there. In many cases, when people who claimed land and then did not live on it and had not developed it with a shelter, fencing or other structures, "claim jumpers" would move in. This was one scenario where claim clubs would enter. The absentee-owned land would be exploited directly and indirectly, or just simply seized with the title held "by claim club." Members might vote expensive local improvements for the land, including roads and schoolhouses, and assign the heavy costs of development as a tax burden on the land held by absentees. This became the regular policy of some claim clubs, designed to force the sale by absentee owners to actual residents, or at least to local speculators. Claim clubs did not always protect the honest settler against the scheming speculator. Although claim club law sometimes shielded of the simple homesteader, it was also a tool and a weapon of the speculator. Claim clubs acted not only to protect a squatter's title to land he lived on and was cultivating, but also to help the same squatter defend unoccupied second and third tracts against the claim of later arrivals.〔Boorstin, D. (1967) ''The Americans: The national experience.'' pp. 73-78.〕 The institution of the claim club is said to have "reached perfection" in Iowa, where more than a hundred such groups carefully regulated land commerce until the United States government intervened.〔Clark, D.E. (1937) ''The West in American History.'' Thomas Y. Crowell Company. p. 321.〕 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Claim club」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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