William Cronon’s change in the land: the book is about Indian colonists and the ecology of New England, the book discusses the history of the economy and ecology of colonial of New England and how it affected the future of the region. In Cronon’s thesis he calms, ‘ the shift from the Indian to European dominance in new England entailed important changes well known to the historians in the ways these people organized their lives, but it also involved fundamental reorganization less well known to historians in the region’s plant and animal communities’(Cronon vii).
According to Cronon, the environment the Europeans first encountered in New England shocked them. Early descriptions were restricted to the coastline, but …show more content…
Their house were portable, and they owned only belonging that were essential since virtually everything had to be portable. Indians might fish in the early spring during the spawing runs, then move to the coast of fish nonspawing, fish later in that spring hunt birds and pick berries until harvest in the last summer. In the winter months the Indians would split into smaller groups to hunt. They were differences in the patterns between the Indians tribes based off of which region they were concentrated in, but the bottom line was that the Indians moved to wherever the food is most plenty. Cronon talk about the way native Americans used to appreciate the land, they manipulated the landscape in simpler way to make it easier for them to live on the land, although Northern native Americans needed to alter even less because they were less prone to agriculture. Cronon wrote, ‘throughout New England, Indians held their demands on the ecosystem to a minimum by moving their settlement from habitat to habitat’ (cronon 53) he explain that the base resources available in the area that season, they may relocate to a more hospitable area. Cronon summarize these ideas by saying ‘for New England Indians ecological diversity, whether natural or artificial, meant abundance stability and regular supply of the things that kept them alive’ (Cronon