Native American Ownership

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1. Ownership was defined differently. From the view of Native Americans, the land was not considered as their belongings. One of the examples is fishing sites. Even though they claimed the product from nature their belongings, such as captured fishes, they shared the benefits of the land with other individuals (Cronon 63). Furthermore, Indians did not settle in one place, rather they moved to other favorable places to live. Therefore, Indians except for a few cases, such as “boundary fishing place,” did not carry any inherent and exclusive property rights on nature (Cronon 66). In other words, their property “ownership” shifted to more favorable place. In contrast, the “Essay on the ordering of Towns” acknowledged that private and exclusive …show more content…
The European settlers regarded the land as their breakthrough. Therefore, it was necessary to exploit the land, so to successfully settle on the “new” land, they need livestock, such as swine, cattle, and horses for farming. There is one of the examples how different the way settlers and the native Americans think about the domesticated animals: “Visitors and Colonists were impressed by the absence of the animals that could be crucial to their successful settlement” (Cronon 24). Therefore, it led to the misunderstanding of different culture between them about how they treated animals because Indians used domesticated animals as their meat supply. Indians had a different division of labors from settlers. The major job of Indian men was hunting, which was recreation for royal European, and it was Indian women who did farming. From the perspective of European settlers, as Indian men did not contribute much on farming, rather killing valuable domesticable animals, settlers did not value the Indian men’s work; “Their wives are their slaves, and do all the things while the men do nothing” (Cronon 52). There is also another example of cultural difference with regards to domesticated animals; “Since Indian property systems granted rights of personal ownership to an animal only at the moment it was killed, there was naturally some initial …show more content…
Therefore, settlers thought of the wood in the forest as “merchantable commodities” for ships, fuel, and various purpose, which led to serious deforestation. As commonly known, deforestation causes tremendous changes in from the landscape to the ecosystem. According to Cronon’s argument, the list of consequences of deforestation does not stop: changes in animal habitat, temperature, quality of soil, and vulnerability to natural disasters such as flood (Cronon 126). To briefly explain, he argued that the removal or forest leaded to animal habitat. More importantly, it, however, also changed the soil quality, which further increased the likelihood of natural disaster. In other words, the soil has a close relationship with the forest: “forests caused soils as much as soils caused forests” (Cronon 115). Furthermore, not only did the settlers destroy the ecosystem, but also they changed the lifestyle of Indians, especially hunting. He also argued that even though they thought their activity was considered in a positive way, this was just not only a mosaic of England in America but also the breakdown of the stable ecosystem (Cronon 126). To conclude, the settlers destroyed the forest for various reasons, but the consequences were
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