The availability of land was a leading motive in the European colonization of America. Although much of the country was inhabited by Indians, European nations claimed sovereignty over the area and denied superior claims by the non-Christian aborigines. The London Company held essentially to this position, although gradually the colony of Virginia, like other English colonies, recognized the Indian's right of occupation and provided some compensation for relinquishment of territory. By the middle of the seventeenth century Virginia had initiated the policy of laying out Indian boundaries or creating reservations for neighboring tribes that were not open to white settlement. Under the London Company land was held in common until the provision for distribution to individual stockholders was carried out after 1616. In addition to grants according to the number of shares of stock owned, the company rewarded individuals with land for special services rendered to the colony. And to stimulate immigration, grants were offered as dividends to voluntary associations or "societies of adventurers" for organizing and financing settlements such as the hundred or particular plantations. It was also possible to obtain patents by purchase or by "treasury right" under the company, but the most significant development was the provision for acquisition by headright as outlined in the Instructions to Governor George Yeardley in 1618. With the dissolution of the company in 1624, the "treasury right" was discontinued in Virginia and did not reappear other than in the Northern Neck until 1699. The major method of obtaining title to land was the headright which attempted to maintain an appropriate balance between the size of the population and the area patented. However, its basic concept was distorted by irregular practices and fraudulent acts. Other conditions for obtaining patents after 1624 were as a dividend for each share of stock invested in the company, as remuneration for special services, and as a means of encouraging frontier fortification. The size of land patents gradually increased during the seventeenth century with the peak being reached in the third quarter. During the last quarter of the period there was a definite trend toward the breakup of large estates by distribution to heirs and by sale of small segments of the larger patent. Whatever the variation in size, the small landholder constituted the major group in seventeenth-century Virginia and assumed a more important role in the socio-economic pattern of the colony than is evident from the descriptions of plantation life by romantic writers.