Early on in American history, colonists learned of the resources and used the accordingly to create trade and commercialism. In the book, Changes in the Land, by William Cronon, the topic is discussed of how Americans have changed the land.
This usage and harvesting the resources have changed the New England landscape. Whether it was a positive or negative change will be discussed here in the following paragraphs. In New England, there were a ton a resource to be harvested and used by the colonists. The colonists viewed that the Indians weren’t using all that was available to them.
(Cronon, page 54). One common object that the colonists harvested were furs; these included furs of: beavers, otter, foxes, deer, rabbits, and others. (Cronon, page 83). Another resource besides fur that was harvested to a large about were trees.
(Cronon, page 108) Trees were harvested for many reasons, the main one was obviously for building purposes. As new colonists settled, expanded, and traveled, they needed wood to build with. Both the wood and the fur trade eventually took a sharp turn to it affecting the environment. With the fur trade, the beavers were eventually rare with caused devastating effects for the environment. (Cronon, page 106) Overall, I believe that the colonists use of the new resources ended up being very negative as those resources were eventually depleted and caused lasting effects.
The use of the resources by the colonist had a negative impact on the environment in the long run. Even today, beavers are scarce because of the hunting of them that was done over 200-300 years ago.
