Native American Pristine Myth Summary

Humans, regardless of time or race, often act in their own self-interest when interacting with nature and the environment. Many often ignore the dire consequences that affect the environment due to their actions which affect the environment’s own ability to sustain itself and produce for the demands of the human population that interact with it. The Native American’s created deep and unignorable ecological changes prior to the arrival of Christopher Columbus. The article by William Denevan is a critical analysis of the ‘pristine myth,’ the idea that the Americas were virtually untouched by humans predating Christopher Columbus's arrival and most of the environmental impact on the land was solely perpetrated by colonial settlers.
The mechanics of the papers concisely summarize the main points of evidence disputing the absence of a ‘footprint’ for Native American’s actions regarding the environment by dividing the paper into sections which detail the Indian’s effects on actions regarding the vegetation, wildlife, and agriculture of the Americas. Denevan’s main challenging points arise from the blatant evidence of Native American’s impact on the environment which predated …show more content…
I mention this because economic challenges often serve as the guiding force behind human and environmental impact. However, there is also a more nuanced point that can be drawn from the article regarding the impact of human and ecological interactions with Native American’s. Most scholars are reluctant to embrace the pristine myth as a myth due to the worry that the inferred point would be that Native American’s had a negative, or even worse or comparable relationship with the environment like colonial settlers did, as most relationships regarding human-environmental impact are usually drawn as detrimental to the

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