How did Europeans attitudes toward the land lead to changes in the ecology of New England in the 17th and 18th centuries? The Europeans attitudes toward the land was they wanted to own and take possession of the land. Colonists occasionally admitted as much when they needed to defend their rights to lands originally purchased from Indians for Indians legitimately to sell their lands they had first to own them (Cronon, 57). Even if the Indians used their land differently from the Europeans they will possessed it by right of first occupancy and by the right of the ecological changes they had wrought in it. Few of the Europeans were willing to recognize that the ways Indians occupied New England ecosystems were as legitimate as the ways Europeans