Ecological Change in New England under Native Americans and Colonists

Colin Calloway carries out a captivating explanation to inform his audience that neither the Colonists of the New World nor the Native Americans were considered "monolithic." Instead, they were much more nuanced in their understanding of the multifaceted attributes of the cultural associations in the Colonial United States. Calloway surveys this intriguing story with illustrative and detailed ways that offer a pertinent starting point for any individual wanting to know more about how the European people and Native Americans cooperated or interacted with one another in America 's first years.

In Thomas Cole’s Essay on American Scenery, the reader is able to appreciate Cole’s predilection and love for the American scenery. It is his belief this scenery is superior to the European scenery, since the latter’s “primitive features of scenery have long since been destroyed or modified … to accommodate the tastes and necessities of a dense population.” However, Cole presents his audience with a gloomy prophecy about America’s future, which he believes will be the same as Europe’s. Still, while acknowledging that industrialization could eventually take over many natural regions, Cole is hopeful that nature will remain victorious, since it will still be predominant. Because of this, he advises the American people to take advantage of

Although New England and the Chesapeake region were both settled largely by the people of English origin, by 1700 the regions had evolved into two distinct societies. The reasons for this distinct development were mostly based on the type on people from England who chose to settle in the two areas, and on the manner in which the areas were settled.

As a rule, the Native Americans are perhaps the most overlooked sector of the population of the colonies. This war completely varied their knowledge of their land and its value. “We know our lands have now become more valuable,” (Document B). No more would they be fooled by

For years, the Native Americans lived a very solitary life with their own unique way of living, that was until the European’s showed up with their very complex way of living. Harmony with nature was a very important aspect of Native American culture. The Native people embraced nature with no intention to modify it unlike the Europeans. They simply cared more about nature and what it had to offer. The spiritual connection between the land and these Natives were distinctive from the Europeans also due to the fact that to the settlers, land meant wealth. As a European, if you owned any land you were considered a wealthy upper class human being. As a Native, no one owned the land and anyone could benefit from the land.

The Europeans changed the land of the home of the Indians, which they renamed New England. In Changes in the Land, Cronon explains all the different aspects in how the Europeans changed the land. Changing by the culture and organization of the Indians lives, the land itself, including the region’s plants and animals. Cronon states, “The shift from Indian to European dominance in New England entailed important changes well known to historians in the ways these peoples organized their lives, but it also involved fundamental reorganizations less well known to historians in the region’s plant and animal communities,” (Cronon, xv). New England went through human development, environmental and ecological change from the Europeans.

The idea that First Nations (here on referred to as FN) in North America always lived in harmony with the environment has been a very controversial and touchy subject when under debate by historians. The language barrier and lack of written information leaves a lot to speculation and the chance of oral history being slightly changed over time leaves biases in the works of historians. This paper, however will argue the concept that FN indeed lived in harmony with nature as they were able to learn from their mistakes and treated the environment and nature with respect to ensure that the coming years would guarantee a plentiful harvest and would protect the lakes, river and nature around them. The FN had been able to realize the effects of

When the first colonists landed in the territories of the new world, they encountered a people and a culture that no European before them had ever seen. As the first of the settlers attempted to survive in a truly foreign part of the world, their written accounts would soon become popular with those curious of this “new” world, and those who already lived and survived in this seemingly inhospitable environment, Native American Indian. Through these personal accounts, the Native Indian soon became cemented in the American narrative, playing an important role in much of the literature of the era. As one would expect though, the representation of the Native Americans and their relationship with European Americans varies in the written works of the people of the time, with the defining difference in these works being the motives behind the writing. These differences and similarities can be seen in two similar works from two rather different authors, John Smith, and Mary Rowlandson.

American history is in a process of continuous change when it comes to ideas, infrastructure, and of course, land. While many argue against the idea of the detrimental effects environmental destruction, numerous events in history have known to show otherwise such as in the Columbian Exchange, the Industrial Revolution, and Westward migration.

As the encroachment of settlers on Indian lands continued, so did the inevitable conflicts. "To the Indians, the arriving Europeans seemed attuned to another world; they appeared oblivious to the rhythms and spirits of nature" (Jordan, 1991). Nature to the Europeans was something of an obstacle, even an enemy, and these disrespectful attitudes were quite apparent to the Indians. The wilderness was also a commodity however: "a forest was so many board feet of timber, a beaver colony so many pelts, a herd of buffalo so many hides" (Jordan, 1991). The Europeans' cultural arrogance and ethnocentrism, and their materialistic view of the land and its inhabitants were repulsive to the Indians. "Europeans, overall, were regarded as something mechanical - soulless creatures wielding diabolically ingenious tools and weapons to accomplish selfish ends" (Jordan, 1991).

Many people are under a false impression that early Native Americans are the original environmentalists. This is an impression that many people share. The Abenaki tribes that resided in Maine from 3700 BP were not by our traditional definition, environmentalists. In fact they were far from ecologically sound. This paper is meant not to criticize the Native Americans of the age, but to clarify their roles in the environment. To better understand this subject some background is needed.

Additionally, Royal gives clarification for Native Americans’ positive stereotypes. He explains, “ But this is far from modern concepts of ecology. Native Americans in fact overhunted deer and beaver even before the arrival of the white man, and did not seriously try to preserve the resources in the vicinity of their villages. As a result, the typical woodland village, having exhausted local soil and game, had to move on average every eight to 10 years” (Royal 47). Although the Native Americans did not destroy the environment like Europeans on such a large scale, they are not trying to protect the environment either. This opposes the stereotypes that Native Americans are model ecologists. Royal also examines the inhumane sides of Native American tribes. Royal reveals, “The

The book “Changes in the Land” by William Cronon in summary is based on environmental history where science, social science, the way society affects human nature and vice-versa is all combined into his narrative. With that being said, he believed that humans are dependent on nature, and nature is something that’s either made or broken by humans. Same goes for vegetation and land area. He wrote about conflicts between two cultures, where when the settlers came in to New England, they took over the Native American’s home. The power the settlers had over the Native Americans grew so strong that it got to a point where the rule of usufruct was put in place, where Native Americans could make use of any natural resource on earth as long as it wasn’t being needed by another person.

In modern America, we often take for granted the natural world that surrounds us and the American culture which is built upon it. For many of us, we give little thought to the food sources that sustain and natural habitats that surround us because when viewed for what they are, most people assume that they have “simply existed” since the country was founded. However, the documentary ‘America Before Columbus’ provided this writer an extremely interesting record of how the America we know came to exist. In the documentary, one of the most interesting discussions centered on the fact that it was not merely the arrival of conquistadors and colonists that irrevocably changed the landscape of the Americas, but that it was also the coined term known as the “Columbian Exchange” that afforded these travelers the ability to proliferate so successfully. The basic definition of the Columbian exchange is one that defines the importation of European flora and fauna. It could also loosely represent other imports, both intended and unintended, such as tools, implements, and even disease. Armed with this definition, it takes little imagination to envision how differently the Americas might have developed had any significant amount of the native European flora, fauna, or other unintended import not been conveyed to the Americas through the Columbian Exchange. Beyond the arrival of explorers, settlers, and colonists to the New World, the breadth of what the Columbian Exchange represented to

1. Based on the readings from weeks one and two, discuss the images of America the European writers constructed to promote colonization and settlement. What kinds of unique natural resources and environmental factors did they extol in their accounts of the New World? Relate these images to natural resources and environmental factors today.