[koheripbal]

Francis Fukuyama specifically talks about the necessity for WRITTEN laws and literacy in his book as one of the core foundations of political order.

Native populations around the world had no "transferable right of ownership" because they had no written laws.

[dragonwriter]

Many native populations around the world had either or both transferrable rights of ownership and written laws, and while the groups having the former and the groups having the latter overlapped, they weren't the same, and then former wasn't a subset of the latter.

The speculation probably is less radically wrong if you consider property interest in land rather than personal property, though it's worth noting that the kind of free transferrability (some) Europeans wanted wasn't even the norm for land, in Europe until the end of feudalism, which was millenia after the development of written laws. Heck, some of the colonial powers neither sought nor had it as a norm themselves—not everyone was England—relying instead on right of conquest to impose what amounted to a feudal system (Spain, I'm looking at you) many places.

[lmilcin]

The chief would not own his tribal land not because of lack of written laws but because his power came from the tribe. He was the chief only as long as could show it is in best interest of the tribe.

The land would typically be claimed, not owned. As soon as you stopped using the land somebody else was in the right to come and use it.