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Summary Of Changes In The Land By William Cronon

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In the book, Changes in the Land: Indians, Colonists, and the Ecology of New England, author William Cronon address the permanent environmental changes and concerns that took place at the hands of Native Americans and colonists in New England. With references to Henry David Thoreau, the first part of the book lays the ground for the reader to feel nostalgic towards the original beauty of New England that was assumed to exist prior to when the Europeans arrived. Cronon expands upon this imagery of New England environmental beauty through an arrangement of sources by presenting the drastic landscape changes that happened after the interaction of two different civilizations. Extensive evidence from this book shows how Native Americans were slowly …show more content…

The Natives only took what they needed to live from the land, unlike the colonists who were interested in luxuries. This can be seen as one of the major differences shown throughout all the interactions between Native Americans and colonists. Native Americans did not see the point in the luxury of owning land, simply having agreements among tribes about where to live, hunt or plant their crops. The English could not even comprehend such an arrangement because they believed it was a natural born right to own land. The Natives were also unbothered by property rights and lacked the desire to own objects that were not useful to them. For example, why would a female Native want to own a hunting knife if her job was to harvest the corn fields? The Natives also worked as a community, willingly giving away objects and tools that no longer served a purpose to them to others that needed them. The lack of desire for ownership confused the English colonists greatly, but also allowed them to easily take advantage of the Native Americans since they were not aware of the land they were sitting on. The only way that an English colonist could own land was if it was given to him by the Crown or if it was purchased from the Natives, which led to colonists making ridiculously unfair deals with Native Americans for monumental amounts of land. For example, one …show more content…

The biggest issue with the colonists was their desire to increase their wealth and their ability to exploit their natural resources. Unlike the Native Americans who kept a balance of what they took from the land, the colonists excessively cut down trees for ships, houses, and other uses. They also brought livestock and other animals with them from Europe, letting them roam into the ecosystems they were not accustom to and throw off the natural balance. The livestock that colonists brought (cows, horses, and pigs) increased the wolf population drastically, ultimately creating problems for both civilizations and resulting in fences being built. The colonists did not pay attention to the impact they were having on the landscape from turning forests into farmlands or by letting their animals graze and destroy previously existing ecosystems. The manure that was brought over by the livestock even changed the type of grass and plants that grew in New England. Colonists even created dams, millponds and canals in the years to come, which resulted in major changes in the fish population, mosquito diseases, and also changed the water flow in some areas. These are just some of the ecological changes that the colonists caused on New England from trying to make a completely different ecosystem into the one in

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William Cronon’s Changes in the Land: Indians, Colonists, and the Ecology of New England Interprets and analyzes the changing conditions in New England’s wildlife communities such as plant and animal that happened to shift from Native American dominance to European dominance. Cronon explains that the transition from Indian to European dominance in New England entailed important changes, commonly known to historians, on how these people organized their lives, but it also involves basic reorganizations, less well known to historians, in the region’s plant and animal communities (Cronon, xv). As the distant world and occupants of Europe were bit by bit introduced to North America’s ecosystem, the limits between the two were obscured. Cronon utilizes an assortment of proof to clarify the circumstances that prompted the dramatic ecological consequences following European contact with New England such as deforestation and different understandings that result in confusion.

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They fenced the land to raise livestock. They saw a distinct difference between community and individual property. At first, the Native Americans believed that it would be fine to share with the English. But when the English took over the land and began to raise livestock, destroying Native American crops and preventing new ones from being planted, the leader of the Wampanoag (known as King Philip to the English) led several American Indian nations to war against the English and some of their allies.

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In his 1995 essay “The Trouble with Wilderness,” William Cronon declares that “the time has come to rethink wilderness” (69). From the practice of agriculture to masculine frontier fantasies, Cronon argues that Americans have historically defined wilderness as an “island,” separate from their polluted urban industrial homes (69). He traces the idea of wilderness throughout American history, asserting that the idea of untouched, pristine wilderness is a harmful fantasy. By idealizing wilderness from a distance, he argues that people justify the destruction of less sublime landscapes and aggravate environmental conflict.

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