I looked up David Wilbur Johnson and found his talks on property rights.
Interesting stuff, but it will take me a while to listen to it all.
I think that the biggest obstacle to finding facts about land records is the un-availability of the old records in many areas.
At least in my particular search I keep running into dead ends because of "records burnt up in court house fire", "maps were not kept by County at the time", "Cherokees didn't have written records", "land sales were recorded at an office which hasn't existed in over a hundred years", etc.
I appreciate the many good points you raised shikamaru.