The underlying context for so many ideas and practices regarding government is territoriality. A government presides over a particular geographical area even if its borders are uncertain, enforcing laws and customs as it sees fit on the people who live in that territory rather than having jurisdiction over people because those persons belong to some group, whether ethnic or religious, whose interests the government sees as its own. That means governments intrude in the lives of nomads who pass through their territory, as well as native Indian tribes whose land has become incorporated into some jurisdiction defined by the government. This idea of territoriality is traced by anthropologists to the time when agriculture became domesticated and so the wealth of a territory was something worth fighting over and so warlords and kings gained power by conquering one territory or another and so gaining access to its cultivated acres. But it might also be the case that warlords took to the domination of territory because that was all they could do, which was something short of commanding the hearts and minds of the inhabitants which were at the disposal of the gods of the local territories if even that, given that religion was ceremonial rather than deep. Moreover, government may have preceded territoriality in that it may not amount to anything more than the warlord deciding he and no one else has the power over life and death, and that he can enforce that on any territory or set of clans that come under his rule even if only temporarily before he moves on to another site. Either way, nations and tribes become identified with their territories more than with their values or customs. America is beautiful from sea to shining sea and a tribe regards its traditional lands as sacred.