Changes in the Land: Indians, Colonists, and the Ecology of New England, book review
Changes in the Land: Indians, Colonists, and the Ecology of New England, by William Cronon, book review
I think every American should read this book.
Well documented, very respectable level of scholarship.
I have a picture in my head about who came to America and why. Those people were brave, they were fed up with the absurdity of over-regulated life in Europe, fed up with the truly pointless and corrosive patterns of classes and castes. These brave souls wanted to live a private life, get on perhaps closer to their conscience, raise a family, try something that no one had tried before. I know those people came here; they are part of why I am proud to be an American.
Mr Cronon's book fills out that picture to show that from the beginning, many of the Europeans who came to America had little-to-no sense of conscience or conservation and were "hell bent" upon taking everything possible from the land as quickly as possible for the maximum amount of profit, and then "getting out of Dodge" ASAP.
I was continually shocked to read about behavior from 1620 through 1800 that sounded just like the most outrageous behavior that I attributed to people in the 20th century. Half of the reason for the continual push West was because the land East had been mindlessly pillaged and made barren. I personally did not need more reasons to see the hubris of my ancestors, but this book was well enough researched that I kept reading and, yes, became even more embarrassed about the blood that flows through my very own veins. Beyond embarrassment there was a new level of an understanding of history - my personal history. I see now that it was poor reasoning on my part to think that rapacious "end-of-times" emotions would have just emerged out of nothing in the 20th century. Yes, it is conceivable that such motivations would arise spontaneously, but it would be wiser to look first to see if such evils had simple predecessors.
The book also does a very good job of documenting changes in the ecology of our land. I grew up in the farm fields of central Illinois. I knew that the land did not always look the way I saw it. But I had only a very vague sense of what the land did look like before colonization. I imagined lots of oak forests and fields of Queen Ann's Lace and Golden Rod. I enjoyed following Cronon's descriptions of changes in flora and fauna as we colonizers tried in our blundering ways to "tame" the land.
Crono also brings in a good amount of original sources to show how this "taming of the land" determined our actions towards the first nations peoples. This spot of shame on all our American souls will never go away - "out!, out, damn spot". This belongs to the mystery of the forgiveness of sins. If I am so idiotic as to suppose I would have acted any differently towards the Indians than my ancestors, then I will also be so idiotic as to believe that there is nothing heinous in my current actions that will be seen with moral outrage by the generations coming after me. Mr Cronon's research helped make all this more specific, describing for example the differences between an Indian's garden and a European settler's garden; or the different methods of forest management, or what was considered a nutritious diet.
This book reminded me of the "Basin and Range" series by John McPhee. If Canton would continue and write three more books on this topic, he might come close to McPhee's wonderful work.