Changes in the Land: Chapter 8 Summary & Analysis

By 1800, the Native population of New England had dwindled while the number of colonizers soared. Indigenous people’s way of life had been destroyed by the transformations triggered by the colonizers and they constantly faced the issues of disease and malnutrition. Animals that had once been abundant had disappeared, as had many species of tree and the amount of forest in general. As a result of deforestation, the region was drier, with more extreme temperatures. There was mass soil exhaustion as well as a whole new group of pests and crop diseases.

Comparing the New England landscape of 1600 to that of 1800 implies that European colonization was the factor behind the enormous transformation that happened during this period. There are many ways in which this is indisputably true. Furthermore, because capitalism drastically intensified during this period, it might be tempting to attribute all the dramatic ecological change that occurred during that time to this socioeconomic shift. Yet there is an extent to which this correlation can be misleading. Some of the ways in which Europeans ended up transforming the land were not primarily economic—for example, the European diseases that colonizers brought over with them. While economic factors intensified the devastation that resulted from these diseases, the diseases themselves were arguably not an economic issue.

Similarly, the changes caused by livestock were clearly related to capitalism, but Europeans had been keeping livestock for centuries before capitalism’s rise. Yet while many of the changes that colonization triggered could not solely be attributed to capitalism, it is also true that “economic and ecological imperialisms reinforced each other.” Native people were keenly aware of this reality. In 1642, the Narragansett sachem Miantonomo compared the land of plenty that had existed in the time of the ancestors with the depleted, apocalyptic reality that lay before his people in the present. Using a variety of different methods, Europeans had seized Native land as their own. As a result, those who had initially welcomed Europeans to New England began to resist their presence.

Miantonomo argued that successful resistance would require “pan-Indian unity.” Yet alongside resistance, Native people also adapted to the new way of life brought about by the colonizers. They changed the way they hunted and farmed and also introduced new forms of social and political organization. Essentially, the way of life of their ancestors had been made impossible. At the same time, Native people generally kept themselves resolutely distinct from Europeans rather than assimilating into colonial society. Indeed, focusing on European colonizers as the primary forces in transforming the landscape risks underemphasizing the agency of Native people. The truth is that Native people were neither changeless nor “passive,” but active agents of history even as they faced intense suppression from the colonizers.

The Native people who remained in New England found themselves forced into reservations on subpar land and deprived of access to animals for hunting and fishing. While ecology explains why Native people ended up being unable to survive on this depleted land, political history is necessary to show why colonizers first put them onto these lands. The assassination of Miantonomo by the colonizers shows what Native people who attempted to resist colonial power faced in return.

Overall, while the transformations to the land that occurred during the colonial period were indeed “multicausal,” there is no doubt that the escalation of capitalism during this period was the primary factor in triggering it. It could be argued that the biggest contrast between Native and European people lay in how they conceptualized the land and its “resources.” Whereas Native people did not tend to accumulate resources, accumulation of resources, commodities, and profit was the driving motivation behind the colonizers’ lives. Under this logic, there was no limit to how much a person “needed.”

Of course, the process by which this political ideology transformed the landscape was gradual and often indirect. Furthermore, colonial economies themselves went through massive transformations between 1600-1800. From the crystallization of property principles to an increase in the degree of profit farmers could expect to make, colonial economic life evolved dramatically during this period. As these tumultuous shifts took place, resources were frequently squandered and areas of land destroyed. Everything about the way the colonizers farmed was based on treating land both as “permanently abundant” and as capital. This was completely inconducive with Native ways of living on the land. 

Beyond these clashes with the land’s indigenous inhabitants and their way of life, the colonial economy was also “ecologically self-destructive.” Colonizers treated the land’s resources as if they were infinite, only to be made starkly aware that this wasn’t the case. Again, while the most dramatic changes to the New England landscape are often thought to have taken place in the nineteenth century, it is important to remember how enormously the land changed during the colonial period, too. Colonization transformed both the social world of New England and the ecological one. The impact on the land was destructive, as “the people of plenty were a people of waste.”