69 Mark Your Territory

CHAPTER 1 What Is Territory? SIZE DOESN'T MATTER WHEN IT COMES TO TERRITORIES. Imagine you are sitting next to a stranger at a movie theater. There is one armrest between the two of you. Whose armrest is it? Do you claim the whole thing? Do you give it to your neighbor? Do you try to share? Or does your elbow fight a small war with the stranger's? Territories can be small, like the armrest between two chairs. Or they can be far larger, the size of a country or even a planet. Each territory brings the same question: Whose is it? Sometimes the answer is not very simple. For example, look at the land around the Sabine River in eastern Texas, USA. Before Europeans came to North America, it was the territory of the Tawakoni Indians. In the mid-1800s, the Tawakoni were forced to leave by European settlers, and the land was turned into farms.

In 1960, the owners changed again. The State of Texas claimed the land and turned it into a state park. The river was damned and the land was flooded to make Lake Tawakoni. But even Texas could not keep all of the land. They lost some of it in 2007. To spiders! One morning, workers at the park found a giant web. It was bigger than two soccer fields. Thousands of spiders had claimed the area as their territory. People came from all over the country to see the amazing web. Several times the web was destroyed by bad weather, but again and again the spiders rebuilt it. What territories do you claim? Do you own a house or an apartment? Maybe it's a desk in a classroom where you always sit. Or maybe it's a garden with a fence around it to keep animals out. Think about your territory. Is it yours? Would you fight to keep it? Would you even fight spiders?

CHAPTER 2 Turf HOW DO YOU MARK YOUR TURF? If you wish to own land in California today, you'll need a lot of money. If you wished to own land there in 1849, you only needed four stakes. The year 1849 was the beginning of the California Gold Rush. That was when news of Californian gold traveled around the world. Nearly 100,000 people hurried to the area hoping to get rich. If you were one of them, you needed to bring four wooden stakes. At the time, land in California was free. Miners claimed their territory by placing four stakes in the ground at the corners. This was called "staking a claim." It meant the territory, and all the gold in that territory, belonged to the person who staked it.

The phrase "stake a claim" is still used today. If you stake a claim, you identify something as belonging to you. In the beginning, there were few laws about land claims. People could make small or large claims, or even stake a claim to many different areas at once. There were even people who came in later and took over other miners' claims. These people were called claim jumpers, and were disliked by nearly everyone. It's easy to see why claim jumpers would be disliked, but who were the real claim jumpers? Before Europeans came to the area, California belonged to Native Americans. Over 50 different tribes lived in that area. When gold was found there, miners came and took the lands away from the Native Americans. Many tribes were forced to move to camps far away from their original land.

The word turf means "grass," but it is also another name for "territory." Throughout history, people have had different ways to mark their turf. They may place a fence around their house or yard. They may draw a line on a map or place a flag in the ground. They may place a name on a parking space or office door. These markers identify their turf. When people mark their turf, they expect others to respect it, but this does not always happen. During the Gold Rush, people often argued over claims, especially claims with large amounts of gold. Sometimes these arguments turned violent. Arguments over larger territories, such as countries, can turn into wars. Even claiming small turfs can be the start of a bigger fight. Turf wars can happen over almost anything, even ice cream.

Like most places in the world, in New York City, ice cream is a summertime favorite. Ice cream trucks sometimes drive around parts of the city, but more often they simply stay in one place and sell ice cream to the neighborhood children and adults. Ice cream truck drivers are very serious about their turf and they don't like to share. Stories of drivers getting into fights or damaging each other's trucks are common. New trucks that enter another driver's turf can have their windows broken or tires cut. In one case, a new driver told the police that another driver had pointed a gun at him. Of course, the reason for ice cream truck turf wars is money. Sharing turf means sharing money. In a New York summer, that may mean losing over a thousand dollars per day.