A cadastre is a map that shows the legal boundaries of real property. In the United States, we typically refer to a cadastre as a plat.
Cadastres may be created or updated at the county records by private parties, such as the initial developers of a subdivision, or by state officials. The metes & bounds are taken from a survey and the professional who determines the metes & bounds on the cadastre is called the surveyor.
Famous surveyors include Presidents George Washington, Thomas Jefferson and Abraham Lincoln (the latter two were also attorneys), as well as Lewis & Clark, Mason & Dixon and John C. Fremont.
Surveyors became prominent local figures at a time when the North American frontier was being introduced to a European regime for the administration of land ownership. George Washington, who came into the world as a member of the lesser gentry, is said to have increased his status and indispensability with Virginia elites by surveying their land.
To our knowledge, Indian (formerly ‘Native American’) land titles were determined by less formal arrangements, with no maps extant, much less cadastres. Contrary to popular belief, Indians did recognize land ownership for themselves and from tribe to tribe-only not in the way observed by Europeans who encroached upon Indian lands. One view is that in our legal system, the type of relationship a tribe held with the property it possessed would have been as ‘trustee’ for its members. That is, the complex ‘private’ v. ‘state’ divide that European descendants have with their own countries would not have been the way Indians saw tribal lands with respect to individual inhabitants. Following the theme of analogy to Anglo law, the sales that occurred between Indians and European settlers on the frontier would indeed have been considered sales-only adjusted for the fact that Europeans considered themselves to be buying ‘fee’ interests (maximum use and enjoyment of the property with respect to the State), while the Indians thought they were selling what we would consider to be ‘easements’ (for use) or ‘profits’ (for hunting).
