Paper on changes on the land Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2000 words

Paper on changes on the reduce - hear ExampleThis is where Cronon starts to heavily contrast Indians and settlers. The Indians do it a point to move from location to location as a form of survival. Cronon says, To take advantage of their lands diversity, Indian villages had to be mobile (54). Colonists disagreed with this implement because it constituted change, one that they were unfamiliar with and it led to criticism. They wished to mirror their settlements from the old world in New England by remaining in one place and only traveling village-to-village if need-be. Although, the Indians did not suffer from hunger, the settlers disapproved of their lifestyle as it reminded them of the poor people in England To those who compared Massachusetts Indians to English beggars, Morton replied, If our beggars of England should, with so much easy as they, put up themselves with foode at all seasons, there would not be so many starved in the streets (55). They cut Indians as starving pe ople despite the truth. Cronon describes settlers as saying, Indian poverty was the result of Indian risky underused land, underused natural abundance, underused human labor (56). Since the Indians failed to utilize all of the land, the colonists considered it to be wasteful. This is ironic because the settlers practice of hoarding any thing affected the ecological system most negatively because once they took it all, they did not give post or at least not in the proper way. The settlers political order of business in remaining bound to the land imposed an imbalance of nature and the land. Instead of taking safe a little here and there, lamentable on, then returning later once the land has been replenished like the Indians, the colonists robbed the land of its resources. They cut down trees, uprooted plant-life and later, introduced agriculture without the means to accurately replenish the soil. It also brought up the read/write head of property lines. This was a concept tha t the Indians did not enforce because they did not need to when moving as often as they did. Land boundaries reinforced the need for property rights given to individuals in a New England colony. This also affected social wealth and trade. The act of taking a forest and what that meant in relation to the settlers and the land was important because it characterized the difference between ownership and items free-for-the-taking. For example, trees as they are rooted in the forest, untouched by man, are considered lacking ownership. The actual act of ownership came into play when the trees were sawed down and made to form ships and homes. Property as defined as to represent boundaries between people equally, it is to articulate at least one set of conscious ecological boundaries between people and things (58). English settlers believed in self-discipline rather than a community pool of property. Where the Indians differ is how they attributed ownership. Cronon says, What the Indians ow ned - or, more precisely, what their villages gave them claim to - was not the land but the things that were on the land during the various seasons of the year (65). The Indians had to abide by this over what the settlers believed because they frequently go across the land as an act of continued existence. The colonists, on the other hand, prone to mimic British society, desired to remain in one spot on the land