Before the introduction of the Dominion Lands Act, western lands were held in common by First Nations. In 1872, the Dominion Lands Act introduced the concept of private land ownership and established procedures by which land could be bought and sold like any other commodity. This map shows the disposition status of individual townships in southern Alberta up to 1913. It also shows the extent to which the new Euro-Canadian ideology had completely changed the nature of the western landscape in only four decades.