Changes in the Land: Indians, Colonists, and the Ecology of New England

In the Preface, Cronon comments on the unlikely path that brought his work to publication in 1983. At that time, nothing similar to the research Cronon proposed had been performed, making his work remarkable due to both Cronon’s position as a Yale graduate student and his somewhat new and controversial ecological topic. However, in the 20 years since the first publication of this work, other scholars have substantially added to the foundation laid by Cronon. His work, therefore, stands as the seminal work in early American ecological history.

In 1855, Henry David Thoreau wrote concerning the loss of wilderness habitat in New England, specifically near Concord, Massachusetts, contrasting his views of the present wilderness with the writings of William Wood, an English traveler in 1633. Thoreau emphasized a loss of variety and abundance in the species of plants and animals in the forest when compared to Wood’s account. Thoreau was not unique, or incorrect, in believing that in previous times the profusion and diversity of all wildlife and plant species appeared to be greater to an astonishing degree.

Among the changes that Thoreau notes is the loss of wild strawberries, gooseberries, raspberries, and currants, none of which was easy to find growing wild during Thoreau’s time. In addition, the woods and forests near the coastline, where the Native Americans lived, were more park-like and open, lacking the underbrush that crowded the forest floors near nineteenth-century European settlements. Trees, too, seemed to lack abundance, with far fewer oaks, firs, plums, and tulip trees than in prior times.

The lack in plant and tree varieties mirrored Thoreau’s tally of now-absent wildlife: “bear, moose, deer, porcupines …rav’nous howling Wolf and beaver” (4). Bird life and fish populations, too, appeared greatly reduced: for example, bass were once caught “two or three thousand at a time” (4), but no longer. Among the birds, swans, turkeys, eagles, and owls had virtually vanished.

Overall, Thoreau grieves for a more romantic and rustic time in American life, viewing the past as more “pristine” and the current world as a “fallen” one (4). Essentially, the historian must answer Thoreau’s disappointment by researching the changes to the land and wildlife that came with the Europeans. Is Thoreau’s nineteenth-century viewpoint realistic? How might the coming of the Europeans have changed, for the worse or for the better, the environment of New England?

This essential question—how the husbandry of the Europeans resulted in the “maiming” or decline of the wilderness—comprises Cronon’s primary topic. In what manner did the European settlers in New England alter a previously idyllic landscape, full of abundance in all forms of life? In other words, Cronon writes: “the task before us is not only to describe the ecological changes that took place in New England but to determine what it was about Indians, and colonists—in their relations both to nature and to each other—that brought those changes about” (15).