Tookland

The Took clan had a history, among Hobbits, of rough and warlike behavior. It stood them in good stead during the Wandering Days, when a Took chieftain, it was said, walked through a Forest of Curses into Rivendell to get aid for the Fallines (Fallohides) at the Last Homely House West of the Sea. Whether this impressive little fable was true or not, the Tooks certainly led Fallohide resistance to the King's forces during their 15th century escape from Rhudaur. During the more peaceful days of their settlement in the Weather Hills, the Tooks, Bucks, and Pendles quarreled constantly. Marcho Fallohide, while arranging for most of his kinsmen to migrate to the Shire, hid his plans from the Tooks as long as possible, hoping they would settle for an expanded "empire" of pastures in the Kingsland. His secrecy was too no avail, since Catinflas Took got a hunting party over the Brandywine at Girdley Island in T.A. 1603 and rapidly staked out an extensive claim in the western end of the Green-hill Country. Catinflas—one of the few Hobbits able to speak (and curse) in fluent Sindarin, learning it from books inherited from his grandsires—had sense enough to make a polite settlement with Sularin, the Siranna Lord of the Pinnath Gelin and nominal leader of all the Elves in eastern Siragale. The Tooks, for all their trouble-making along the Shire Road (the Redway or Men Caraug from Waymeet to Sarn Ford) tended the woods of the Green Hills carefully.

Tookland in TA 1640
Catinflas passed on these policies to his grandson Isumbras, the new Took-thane, and Sularin is one of the few individuals who can talk seriously with the bull-headed young chieftain. The primary Took village is Tuckburrow, hidden in a ghyll on the northern slopes of the Green Hills. From here the Green-hill Trace, built on an old path once used by an Arnorian religious sect, leads along the northern slopes of the hills through Buck territory to Stock. However, relations being what they are, most outside travelers to Tuckburrow venture south from the Great East Road on the Falline Trace, which the warring clans have sworn to leave in peace. Other trails, known only to the Tooks, lead westward through the hills to their extensive land-clearings around Tookbank and Whitwell. The Tooks are much leerier of outsiders than other clans. Men who cross their boundaries, marked or unmarked, are likely to find themselves arrested and escorted to the edge of Waymeet without so much as a "by-your-leave". Persons who commit violent acts against Tooks and Hobbits under their protection tend to disappear. Tamir, the Arthadan reeve at Bywater, dislikes this violation of his authority, but has not managed to find anyone willing to penetrate the Tookland and find the buried evidence. Since the Tooks execute criminals by drowning in a sinkhole in the Green Hills, this could be a daunting task.