Five hundred years have passed since European contact was made with what is now known as America. Colonization quickly followed, creating a New World with distinct cultures, traditions, religion, and politics. However, an economy driven society would prove to be the most influential factor during this settlement. The Industrial Revolution would not only alter human history in America, but would also drastically modify the natural environment as man progressed across the continent and learned to acclimate and exploit nature for its overall advancement. Both Changes in the Land by William Cronon and The Organic Machine by Richard White, discuss the effects man has had on the American environment—and vice versa—since early colonial days of settlement.
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Prior to the arrival of the Europeans, trade had already existed among the indigenous; a simple, effective method of likened goods. Example: one food for another food. “The whites particularly changed these relationships. They offered nonfood valuables for food.” (24) Reluctantly, the Indians eventually began to trade their salmon. Their expert skills, and efficient canoes and navigation of the river, allowed for sufficient fishing, much more than the settlers. The Indian tribes who had long depended on the Columbian River knew how to best utilize the “organic machine” to receive substances without damage or depletion. In essence, they understood how to work with the natural energy of the river to receive nourishment. Unfortunately, disease would ravage the region, decimating a magnanimous amount of the Indian and European populations. “By 1875, the total loss was close to two-thirds.” (27) Fishing of the salmon in the Columbian River never regained its previous grandeur by neither Indian nor white. However, human ingenuity and technology was on the rise, and other plans for the energetic river had been realized by Joel Palmer in 1845 upon his arrival in Oregon City. Hence the arrival of steam powered and water propelled machinery into a rapidly modernizing …show more content…
The Columbian River was dammed to produce hydroelectricity, altered for extensive irrigation, while fish breeding became a popular cooperative that replaced the once generous salmon population. According to White, machines using hydroelectricity and steam soon became the replacement for manpower, for a machine’s capacity to “exert far greater force than a man’s body could ever muster,” gave an obvious advantage in overcoming nature’s challenges to reaping in the rewards of advanced production. The result of these new implementations would be the transformation of an “organic machine” once ruled by the laws of the environment, into a manmade instrument void of true nature, which is now beyond repair and can never return to its former, as nature intended,
Prior to the arrival of the Europeans, trade had already existed among the indigenous; a simple, effective method of likened goods. Example: one food for another food. “The whites particularly changed these relationships. They offered nonfood valuables for food.” (24) Reluctantly, the Indians eventually began to trade their salmon. Their expert skills, and efficient canoes and navigation of the river, allowed for sufficient fishing, much more than the settlers. The Indian tribes who had long depended on the Columbian River knew how to best utilize the “organic machine” to receive substances without damage or depletion. In essence, they understood how to work with the natural energy of the river to receive nourishment. Unfortunately, disease would ravage the region, decimating a magnanimous amount of the Indian and European populations. “By 1875, the total loss was close to two-thirds.” (27) Fishing of the salmon in the Columbian River never regained its previous grandeur by neither Indian nor white. However, human ingenuity and technology was on the rise, and other plans for the energetic river had been realized by Joel Palmer in 1845 upon his arrival in Oregon City. Hence the arrival of steam powered and water propelled machinery into a rapidly modernizing …show more content…
The Columbian River was dammed to produce hydroelectricity, altered for extensive irrigation, while fish breeding became a popular cooperative that replaced the once generous salmon population. According to White, machines using hydroelectricity and steam soon became the replacement for manpower, for a machine’s capacity to “exert far greater force than a man’s body could ever muster,” gave an obvious advantage in overcoming nature’s challenges to reaping in the rewards of advanced production. The result of these new implementations would be the transformation of an “organic machine” once ruled by the laws of the environment, into a manmade instrument void of true nature, which is now beyond repair and can never return to its former, as nature intended,