Posted: Thu Jan 07, 2010 11:41 pm Post subject: Europeans and Native New Englanders
Read
"A Hideous and Desolate Wilderness," Bradford
"Potential of the New English Canaan," Morton
"Fate of the Abenaki in the Colonial Ecological Revolution," Merchant
"Eden," Krech
Head's up: This is a longer reading. It's in 2 parts, and the first part does not need to be read actively, while the second part does.
Part I: "A Hideous and Desolate Wilderness" by William Bradford, "Potential of the New English Canaan" by Thomas Morton, and "Fate of the Abenaki in the Colonial Ecological Revolution" by Carolyn Merchant (pp. 44-47)
Part II: "Eden", from Shepard Krech III's The Ecological Indian: Myth and History (pp. 84-97)
Please post your ideas and reponses. Share the ideas that you develop on your own, but also be sure to respond and discuss each other's posts.
I thought the most interesting parts of the reading were the Potential of the new English canaan and Eden. They were different. Eden was definitely more recent and easier for me to understand. I liked the Potential of the new English canaan because of the way it was worded. The first segments seemed poetic and even romantic. Maybe this was partially because of the wording, it sounded fancy but it was definitely partially the content. I found Eden interesting but mainly sad. I never knew how many people died. I assumed that there must have been fewer natives who died and who were in the country. I was also very surprised to find out how many of them died from disease and not from being killed.
How did the fact that disease was such a big presence for the natives effect other's when they read it? Did it make what happened any better?
It’s nuts how Krech’s piece further illustrated the interconnectedness of everything in shaping history. I was fascinated by the relationship between diet and disease, that the native’s maize based diet was a factor in their demise. Interesting too, how the different natives were affected differently by diseases according to their tribe’s geographical location.
Krech lost me at times when he decided to profile all the different diseases. It was nice to know, but it didn’t seem necessary. His central point was captivating though: the forming of the new world had more to with the environment than it did humans. When describing the reasons for the natives’ success in living within the lands capacity he said it “might have had more to do with accident than design.”
While I think he backed up his argument well, I question his final wording. “Accident”? What are environmental factors? Can we call them accidental? Inevitable? Random? What do we call these massive environmental forces in our history?
To respond to Peter, I think the death of millions is always tragic. There is something comforting though, in knowing that it wasn’t the result of human cruelty, but rather environmental circumstance.
The reading ended with the mention of God, and how the Europeans mistook the ecological factors as being the work of God. This brought me back to something I was thinking about in class today. Was this God explanation just a bad mistake? Or is it an interpretation with it’s own context, that should be investigated, possibly using environmental history? What if the Europeans didn’t believe in God? What are the environmental factors behind different religions and faiths? Can we look to the environment to provide an explanation for the difference between Eastern religion and Western religion?
Also, it was nice seeing ‘historiography’ used in an actual text. I was fascinated about the historical dilemma of figuring out how many people lived in the new world before the Europeans came. It was a brief, but interesting, glimpse into the world of professional History, and all the politics and stigmas historians deal with.
I was surprised to hear New England be compared to such wondrous places as Canaan and Eden. I don’t think of Massachusetts in 2010 as a utopia, and it makes me wonder what used to be here that no longer is, or is it our present day society not being appreciative of what is around us? I knew there were a lot of new things to be discovered and seen here in early colonial America, but I had not considered how exciting and breathtaking the experience of finding them was for the explorers. This excitement and wonder was surely conveyed through the language, and as Peter said, sounded almost romantic. It was as if the Englishmen fell in love (perhaps even at first sight) with the land. It makes me sad that I don’t hear that sort of passion too often when people talk about a land. The relationship between humans and the land seems to have lost some of its magic. Where did this delightful relationship go? Is it simply because it grows out of the thrill of discovery, and most of the big things in the world have already been discovered at this point? How can we built this stimulating relationship with the land back into our lives in America?
I have not finished all of the reading yet. But, while it is still on my mind, I would like to comment on “Potential of the New English Canaan.” Although I knew it in the back of my head, I never really thought about just how much land was still basically untouched a few hundred years ago. It has only just dawned on me how much humans have managed to build up in just a few hundred years. In a way it is sort of amazing, how much we have created. But on the other hand, it is also sort of terrifying, knowing the affect we have on the environment right now makes you think about the affect we will have on the environment in a few hundred years if we don’t slow down.
This also made me think about something my group had been talking a bit about today for our definition. One of our main themes was human and nature’s co-dependence. When Morton was talking about the different types of trees he listed off the uses of each particular wood and he seemed very content with its strength and whatnot. And I realized just how much the European settlers and explorers depended on nature. If there had not been this wood it is likely that they wouldn’t have survived. He sounded so appreciative; he was put in a situation where it was made obvious that he needed these resources for survival.
For many of us in the United States, it is less obvious to us how much we depend on nature. We, like these early explorers and settlers, couldn’t survive without it. But, this is in no way obvious to us. It never really crosses are minds because it doesn’t need to. Most of what is bought and sold in our country are foods and other things that once started out in the earth but have been processed and morphed and packaged and re-packaged before they ever reach our hands. So we look at these companies as something to be dependent on. Most of us go to the grocery store for food, not the ground. And this could be why it is so hard for many people to care about the environment; they don’t see how important it is.
Wow, I hadn't realized beavers were so important to the fur trade.
I would definitely believe that "A Hideous and Desolate Wilderness" was written in 1647. It was a little hard to get through. I thought the last paragraph was a little weird. It didn't feel like it really fit with the rest of the story. He was talking about the first settlers coming to America and then all of a sudden, he switched to religion. I don't know, I just thought that it didn't seem like it matched well to the rest of his essay- which, surprisingly, I liked.
Do we know whose speaking (point of view) in the Potential of New English Canaan? It's in "new english" and the second half of it sounds like its coming from a settler, but the first half sort of seemed like it was coming from a Native American. But I doubt a Native American would be speaking english at this point, would they?
I found the language used in this essay very, very annoying...
I haven't quite finished the Eden essay, I'll write more on that later..
What sent me reeling was in the Eden reading when Krech talks about Europe between the fifteenth and seventeenth century. He brings up how much Europeans “altered their landscapes,” clearing tens of thousands of square miles all in the name of keeping up with their demands and technology. And when the land becomes overpopulated, they naturally decide to prowl on another mass of land. I’m uneasy saying that the Europeans fell in love with the American land, considering what they had done to their own. As much as they might have briefly admired the new, unkempt beauty of the land, I believe they were looking at it thinking what a perfect fresh new slate it was to continue their standard environmental habits, “fill[ing] the skies with soot.” Almost like a kid who can’t be trusted with a balloon because they will let go of it and have it fly away, cry about losing it, and then be given a shiny new one only to let it go again. Though the pressure on the Europeans to harvest the land harmfully was high, could it have been avoided in any way? Did the Europeans not have any choice but to ruin their own land and then migrate to spoil another? Will this happen to us? Do we have a choice?
What struck me the most was not the disease and death, but the discussion in "Eden" about the sustainability of the low impact, low population Native Americans. The first series of readings discussed the apparent wealth of the new world, but there were many Native American cultures which died out due to overworking the land. Most villages moved on every 12 years, in a migratory cycle reminiscent of hunter-gatherer communities, in an effort to stay on usable land.
There were at most 18 million people in North America, none of which were industrialized, and they had difficulty finding resources. This doesn't correspond well with the 6 billion people that currently live on the planet, most of which are industrialized or industrializing.
How can we survive with such high numbers without driving ourselves to extinction?
This was the kind of stuff that really makes me hate being a white person and knowing that I am still contributing to systems made by white people. I was made particularly angry at the "Potential of the New England Canaan" reading. I found it almost offensive how the author explained the benefits of uncontrolled burns of the wilderness, then goes on to explain the extreme "bewty" of the place. They did these burns so they could clear a wide-ass path for travel and making the woods more like "as in our parks... beautiful and commodious." Even for being written at probably the peak of European selfishness and ignorance, this writing was scarily unaware, yet foreboding, of the future raping of the land and depletion of the resources that made it so beautiful.
I also hate the fact that White people used the few material things that they had that were above those of indians to insert themselves into fully independent communities and create a complete dependence on their goods for the survival of tribes. "What had begun as adaptation and absorption became dependency."
To Emily: I really don't think that humans and nature have a co-dependence. Humans depend on nature, but nature would exist (and probably thrive) without humans. They are, however, going to always be interwoven in history.
Posted: Fri Jan 08, 2010 10:03 am Post subject: Stuff.
So while i was reading "Eden", I came across a quote that triggered some other information in me that I hadn't ever had to/thought i would have to use. I was forced to go to hebrew school when I was younger and so we were educated in all things torah. The quote in Eden, "Massachusetts, Morton thought, was 'Nature's Masterpiece', a land equal to the Israelites' Canaan". This clearly forshadowed the takeover of North America by Europeans. When the Israelites rolled up to Canaa, they found it occupied by another people. God told the Israelites something along the lines of, "This will all be yours", and the Israelites fought their way in and claimed Canaan. The Europeans didn't exactly waltz in and grab all of North America in a smooth stream/motion. They encountered resistance and fought for the control of N.A. I though that Krech did an excellent job in including an analogy that so closely parallels its counter-part.
To respond to Naomi, I think that although there are obviously large amounts of people who have very beautiful/healthy relationships with the earth, the relationships that humankind had with the land have dwindled due to increasingly engaging techology as well as the hustle and bustle of daily life. In Brookline, there is a park that my friends and I, in fact, most people from around my area, call the "no fun" park. It is beautiful in the spring and summer, with decently large areas of open grass to play frisbee or soccer, etc... on. HOWEVER. There is a large green sign that stands at the beginning of the path through the park that reads: "No: Dogs, Biking, or Ball-Playing." then it says something about fines. I have seen a cop go up to a couple who were playing wiffle ball and give them a stern warning. Maybe our nice relationship with the land has been affected by the want to "protect" the land.
To Stefan: You're right. Nature isn't dependent on humans. But i guess i saw it more as that sometimes we help nature along or change it in a positive way. There are basic and very direct things we do, like planting seeds. And there are indirect ones, like because of something we do, certain species of plants/ animals thrive. So codependence is the wrong wording.
Merchant mentioned that the Native Americans had gone from trying to adapt to becoming dependent on their new found life. It was i guess....sad for me to see that their belief in animals and in Gluskabe crushed once Europeans diseases came in. The reading talked about who to put the blame on and well clearly in lies in European greed. On page 49, merchant mentions that there was a misinterpretation between the Europeans and the natives. While the natives thought that giving their land rights away to the Europeans would just mean sharing the land, Europeans actually took it. Couple the lost land along with the them dying from disease and from having to move every decade or so, and it shouldn't be a surprise that they had nothing by the 1700s.
Like Paul, I liked how Krech included God in the ending of "Eden." This all seemed like a Domino effect. The way I see it is that the Europeans are the ones that pushed the first domino over. Before the Europeans had come, the Natives struggled with sticking to permanent homes. Once the diseases were introduced it just all fell like "an invading force that took no prisoners." (Eden)
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