Anomalously, under the present law, the cultivated land within the village territory belongs outright to its private owners, who can dispose of it as they choose. In practice, land is not often sold, and when it is, it is normally sold to close kin or to neighbours. I can recall no instance of village land being sold to a complete outsider (p. 127). Moreover, the exercise of the individual rights involves de facto co-operation with other villagers. The land can only be cropped in alternate years, in ccordance with the village fallow system described before. Success depends on the protection of the village herdsman and watchman, and only a resident owner or tenant can be sure of this protection. Some land in most villages is in fact owned by outsiders, but almost always by close kin of village families. One or two people living in villages near Sakaltutan worked land inside the Sakaltutan territory, if it was not too far from their own homes, and similarly some Sakaltutan men held and worked land in other villages. In other cases, kin living elsewhere, who had inherited rights to a share of land, let it on a share-cropping basis to their kin in the village and came annually at the harvest to collect their share of produce.
Besides cultivated land, house sites and land in the settled area are owned privately, and occasionally water meadow or threshing sites are also so owned.
Close to every village are areas of meadow for casual grazing,