34 pages • 1 hour read
William CrononChanges in the Land: Indians, Colonists, and the Ecology of New England
Nonfiction | Book | Adult | Published in 1983A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
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Commodification of the Wilderness
The mercantile values that the European settlers arrived with determined their relationship to the land. They perceived the bounty of the natural world, including fish, shellfish, waterfowl, bears, deer, beaver, foxes, and grasslands, as “free” and available to anyone who used their labor to gather them up. Wherever possible, the settlers first attempted to create surplus goods for trade with the Native Americans and each other. Next, they created a market for desirable goods that no longer existed in the Old World, including tall white pine timbers for masts, other wood for shipbuilding, and furs. In every way, the settlers viewed the landscape as a money-making venture.
The market economy eventually tied the New World inexorably to the Old World, just as the settlers attempted to recreate their farms along the model of the farms left behind in England. In so doing, they destroyed the ecosystem of the New World, all the while making a profit.
Ecological Changes Due to European Attitudes about Land
The disastrous ecological changes in the land, due to European notions of land usage and property ownership, cannot be understated. The Native Americans also participated in the commodification of the environment in their attempts to gain material advantage, particularly as they hunted beaver to extinction in exchange for European goods. As both groups sought to get ahead economically, they systematically depleted the natural resources of New England. First, the Native Americans and Europeans depleted the populations of fur-bearing animals. Next, the Europeans deforested southern New England, followed by northern New England, by stripping the land of shipbuilding timbers, burning and clearing forests for farmland and pastureland, and decimating forests for heating fuel. As the forests were cleared and European farming techniques depleted the soil, erosion and loss of soil nutrients affected crop yields and eventually left land barren.
In the process of developing towns and farms, the settlers also fenced in the land “belonging” to them. In this manner, they deprived Native peoples of their nomadic, subsistence lifestyle. By 1800, Native Americans were forced onto reservations, which existed on depleted land or land unwanted by the Europeans. Ultimately, both groups lived in a vastly transformed landscape.
