"Changes in the Land" by William Cronon

Changes in the Land

INDIANS, COLONISTS, and the ECOLOGY of NEW ENGLAND

By William Cronon

A presentation by Clayton Brown, Carmen Golden John Gramentine, Gerardo Gallegos, Alejandro Garza, and Cindy Vazquez

Author’s Background

William Cronon:

-Research professor of history, geography, and environmental studies at the University of Wisconsin/Madison.

-His research is focused in understand the history of of human interactions with the natural world.

Why did he write the book?

-It was meant to be a seminar paper while Cronon was at Yale, and later on he developed his arguments into a book.

-It was focused to be a study of how the New England landscape changed as control of the region shifted from Indians to European Colonists.

Culture

• What the colonists saw as utensils they perceived as symbols of status and wealth

• Native Indians were part of the nature, rather Colonists were apart from the nature and use them for their benefit

Property Rights

• An essential concept in modern society (capitalism/mercantilism

• In order the colonists could get the land was from the Royal Crown or from a more local side in New England

• The land was divided by fences

• The Indians had the idea that if a land had already work done, they didn’t had the right to own it or work on it.

Humans with Nature

Self preservation for Colonists were their first priority, while Native Indians were indifferent to their individual needs.

The colonists had different levels of impacts. One was that the colonists had a more ambitious way to explode the resource in comparison with the Indians.

Deforestation

Production Systems

“ECO” ecology and economy

The use of fire by the Indians, how the use it to clear lands for plantations. Making traveling easier, and also bringing nutrients into the land faster.

Agriculture and husbanded, it was the domestications of animals.

Pasteroalism, they used the animals all over the place with no control

The use of fences to control animals not going to other plantations.

Colonists didn't move from place to place and native Indians were moving to place to place to find resources and food.

Political Structure

Networking: Natives=kin networks, and local proximity

International trade and foreign values.

Tribes meet up together and exchange gifts to work together.

Methods

Primary documents:

• Palynology
• Sediments in ponds.
• Surveyor records.
• Portrait landscapes.

Secondary documents:

• Colonists' journals

Environmental History

• The abundance of trees in sea shore, and all the wild animals.
• The fertility of the soil
• The exploitation of the timber
• The exportation of the commodities

Purposes

photo credit Nasa / Goddard Space Flight Center / Reto Stöckli

• To inform younger generations the environmental changes resulted from the invasion of the Colonists of New England.

• To show the collision between two different cultures working and interacting in the same landscape.

Significance

• “ECO” ecology and economy
• Colonists shocked at “impoverished” living in a land of such abundance
• Commoditization:

-Ecosystem treated as compartments w/ extractable units

-Market values determined by English culture & scarcity