Changes in the Land: Indians, Colonists, and the Ecology of New England

"I use Cronon in my food history class at Dartmouth because I want students to understand that choices were made prior to and during European colonial settlement, about how to extract sustenance from the land. Those choices were driven by cultural practices and social relations. Cronon contrasts the ways that Native Americans used the land, taking what it would give, with the way colonists used the land, trying to force it to yield what they wanted. Native Americans migrated with the seasons and did not try to engage in agriculture in inhospitable places, such as Northern New England. English colonists attempted to impose their way of producing food in this same place. The consequences of their choices were problematic to the inhabitants and to the health of the land. It’s a wonderful study, over a long period of time, focused on two cultures and the different ways in which they use that land. Many see Cronon’s book as ecological studies or environmental history. But what I see is his study of the consequences of raising livestock on the land, the consequences of extracting food from a place. Changes in the land, environmental changes, happen for a reason. The reason behind the changes in the land as a consequence of colonialism was the commodification of the land’s yields. Cronon makes this point so well in another book of his, Nature’s Metropolis . But in this first book, he also makes clear that livestock agricultural practices, food production practices, have consequences."