Pre-contact New England
Muir’s treatment of native Americans follows William Cronon’s understanding of native cultures as agents of change who interacted with the ecosystems they inhabited in complex ways. Her innovation here is the use of archaeological data to argue that the Iroquois expansion onto Algonquian lands was checked by the Algonquian adoption of agriculture enabling them to support populations large enough to include a body of warriors that could hold back the threat of Iroquois conquest.
Read more about this topic: Reflections In Bullough's Pond
Famous quotes containing the word england:
“It had not a New England but an Oriental character, reminding us of trim Persian gardens, of Haroun Al-raschid, and the artificial lakes of the East.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)