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US Environmental History Class at CSW
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#Post#: 339--------------------------------------------------
#7: "Bisons on the Great Plains" by Andrew Isenberg
and Brian Donahue, "The Rise and Fall of Mixed
By: TeacherRachel Date: February 21, 2019, 9:36 am
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"Bisons on the Great Plains" by Andrew Isenberg (pp. 51-59) (but
it's actually only a couple of pages, don't worry)
AND
Brian Donahue, "The Rise and Fall of Mixed Husbandry in New
England," from Reclaiming the Commons pp.109-117*,
*Stop at paragraph break.
Post, as always... Ask a question and answer a question.
#Post#: 341--------------------------------------------------
Re: #7: "Bisons on the Great Plains" by Andrew Isenber
g and Brian Donahue, "The Rise and Fall of M
By: jbass Date: February 24, 2019, 10:04 am
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In these readings it seems like we see a connection to the human
instinct to survive. We see the natives being forced to adapt to
the nomadic lifestyle by changing their ways. They are forced to
create new technology to move themselves forward if they want to
survive. This basic fundamental is the key of what we see in
environmental history. The things around the Native Americans
were what they used to further themselves as a civilization.
Without this key progression there would cease to be Native
Americans in America.
#Post#: 342--------------------------------------------------
Re: #7: "Bisons on the Great Plains" by Andrew Isenber
g and Brian Donahue, "The Rise and Fall of M
By: asantello Date: February 24, 2019, 1:45 pm
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The reading on the nomads brought forward some ideas I hadn’t
thought of particularly the power shift from the villagers to
the nomads. Isenberg explains, “The villagers’ dominance began
to wane when the Sioux, Comanches and other acquired horses; the
horses gave the nomads the ability to mount quick raids on the
villages”(Isenberg, 59). I wonder how that changed the
relationships. I know before it wasn’t all peaceful sharing and
loving one another, but did it make both the nomads and the
villagers even more hostile, and less likely to actually trade.
If so did the need to learn how to defend oneself better, and
the distaste for strangers, lead to them fighting off the
Europeans at all? Also in what other ways would this power show
itself besides just being able to raid the villages. I’m
wondering if it gave them better access to resources.
In the second reading I enjoyed the part about the farmers
wanting to be able to establish a place in the community and
pass land onto their family. It felt very wholesome. It was
interesting to learn the history of the places like Watertown
and Weston that we literally interact with everyday. I wonder if
Sherrill would ever do a CSW history presentation on the land.
While the struggle to change the land into grazing areas, seemed
difficult, I wish there had been less time spent on that and
more time spent on how the land bounced back from being
overworked. I always kind of thought for the most part when
colonists took the land, resources for the most part just
decreased over time. The articles instead explained, “Enough
trees survived in woodlots and fencerows to reclaim the land as
fast as pastures failed”(117). I still don’t fully understand
what happened. Were they just all too busy fighting the war to
attend to the lands, and if so how was four years enough time to
make a major difference?
#Post#: 343--------------------------------------------------
Re: #7: "Bisons on the Great Plains" by Andrew Isenber
g and Brian Donahue, "The Rise and Fall of M
By: ngood Date: February 24, 2019, 2:25 pm
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Misc thoughts:
- (RE: Addie) I agree with your question about how the Civil War
influenced farming in NE -- I wish Donahue had talked more about
that, because I wanted to hear more. Also yes to Sherrill
talking about ecology in Weston!!
- Hearing about the evolution of the terms “farm” and “meadow”
was interesting
- Land in NE not good for farming (couldn’t sustain large
plantations like in the south — hence differences in attitudes
towards slavery)
- Interesting to think about (from Isenberg’s reading) how the
way in which one gets food shapes social hierarchy
- This might seem out of nowhere, but the Donahue reading
reminded me of my conviction that there should be more body
farms (aka anthropological research facilities) in the US (and
in the rest of the world in general). There are only six body
farms in the US and only one outside the US in Australia, and
four of those six in the US are all located in grassland/desert
environments. Since New England has such a different environment
than those six, I think the fact that there is one starting up
now in MA is really important for science.
Misc questions:
- I want to learn more about how whaling affected culture and
the environment in New England
- How long does it take for a community to build immunity?
- Cattle brought light in addition to manure, leather, milk, and
meat? How??
#Post#: 344--------------------------------------------------
Re: #7: "Bisons on the Great Plains" by Andrew Isenber
g and Brian Donahue, "The Rise and Fall of M
By: afreitag Date: February 24, 2019, 3:23 pm
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Natalie's "I want to learn more about how whaling affected
culture and the environment in New England" made me realize how
we have yet to cover oceans or large bodies of water in this
class (correct me if I'm wrong and there was some part of a
reading that I'm not thinking of). Donahue mentioned "the only
reliable grass to be found grew in wet places: salt marshes
along the coast and open meadows along broad stretches of rivers
and brooks inland" but didn't go into specifics about the
coastal areas and farming, just the inland places.* How did
animal farming reliant on ocean ecology compare to animal
farming reliant on river/forest ecology? Was one better/more
efficient than the other? Which one was more popular? Not only
do I have questions about the coastal land, but there is so much
unknown about the use of the ocean. How did colonizers from
England use the ocean as a resource? How were Native Americans
using it before the English arrived? Did that change after they
arrived? That reminds me of a theme I've noticed - Colonizers'
land use in many ways changed Native Americans' land use (of
course that's obvious now, but when America was first being
colonized, Native Americans had to quickly adapt to survive).
I'm also thinking about any more modern issues we might be
discussing in this class, because so many issues today concern
water. Will we cover the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico from a
few years ago? Or California's constant drought? Increased
wildfires? Global warming developments? Personally, I would
enjoy learning more about those things
*I didn't get to read the last page of Donahue's paper so I
don't say that with confidence
#Post#: 345--------------------------------------------------
Re: #7: "Bisons on the Great Plains" by Andrew Isenber
g and Brian Donahue, "The Rise and Fall of M
By: yzhu2020 Date: February 24, 2019, 5:01 pm
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I really liked this reading because it was able to provide with
information of how America's (New England's technically) economy
changes as natural resources/land changed. I enjoyed parts
discusses Weston because that's where are school is located,
obviously. One of the facts that surprised me is the
mother-daughter town system. I didn't realize that Weston was a
daughter-town of Watertown because I didn't know about the
system. But it makes sense for me after reading the article
because I know that back in the days the children of town lords
received land as inheritance so they would split lands to give
each of the children. In addition, it has never crossed my mind
that Weston used to be a big agricultural land because it's
fairly dense with forests (although I did know that Cat Rock
used to have pastures because I took ecology).
A bit related to the reading itself, I have noticed that we
haven't talked about water, yet, though we discussed in the
first two classes that water is very significant when it comes
to environmental history.
A question that I have is that was migration of animals natural
or was it caused by human interactions?
#Post#: 346--------------------------------------------------
Re: #7: "Bisons on the Great Plains" by Andrew Isenber
g and Brian Donahue, "The Rise and Fall of M
By: samfarley Date: February 24, 2019, 5:29 pm
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These two readings were interesting to read next to each other,
as a few connections can be made between the two. The major
theme is the notion that a culture’s livelihood is entirely
dependant on the type of land that they inhabit, and if a
culture is going to survive, it will change its way of life if a
more economical way of using the land can be found. In terms of
the native americans discussed in this reading, the animals
available to these tribes completely and totally dictated their
lives. When horses began to become more common in native tribes,
migratory lifestyles became possible. And when tribes abandoned
their stationary lifestyles to instead follow buffalo herds,
they did this because they could get more from less work.
Instead of dividing up tribes so that different types of labor
could each produce the different goods they needed, tribes
instead focused solely on the buffalo, and then traded surplus
meat with other tribes that could provide such things.
In terms of the New Englanders, they did something similar, all
because the land was incredibly varied, allowing for different
types of farming and grazing in different places. With a
specified workforce, each town or family could focus and perfect
their way of farming for a specific product, and then trade with
others. If the landscape of New England had not been so varied
or difficult, would this same specification have happened?
#Post#: 347--------------------------------------------------
Re: #7: "Bisons on the Great Plains" by Andrew Isenber
g and Brian Donahue, "The Rise and Fall of M
By: smartins2019 Date: February 24, 2019, 7:13 pm
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(RE) Alice and Natalie… I am also wondering about whaling/
oceans? I don’t recall speaking on bodies of water either really
and I am wondering if it would be relevant to incorporate?
Random Thoughts-
I found the first part of the reading interested as it talked
about the integration of horses into Native American life… this
obviously shows how ignorant I’ve been by believing fictional
history (if that makes sense, I can’t think of another way to
put it) I have always been under the impression that Native
Americans were introduced to horses naturally, I never knew that
that was the doing of the Europeans. The reading says something
about how they took a liking to the horses because they were
more beneficial to hunt with/ better transportation than dogs
and the thought that they were using dogs before horses
completely caught me off guard… again, I know that sounds
incredibly ignorant but it’s true!
ALSO-
I cringed hard reading some of this… for example…
“Historians cannot know how many Native Americans died as a
result of Old World diseases, but based in the virulence of the
diseases and an understanding of how epidemics behave, it
appears likely that mortality was extremely hight…” 58
I’m just confused why they are so hesitant to admit the
Europeans fault and cause of the dying out of Native Americans…
Like I know exactly why… But how can someone deny it after all
these years and all of the evidence we have…
Question: Am I the only one who sees this pattern?
#Post#: 348--------------------------------------------------
Re: #7: "Bisons on the Great Plains" by Andrew Isenber
g and Brian Donahue, "The Rise and Fall of M
By: amacdonald Date: February 24, 2019, 8:29 pm
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Responding to Alisa:
I think that the migration of animals, specifically horses, was
natural. In the passage Indians and Bison on the Great Plains, I
looked at how “horses migrated in the opposite direction from
America to Asia” (8) via the Bering Strait land bridge. Humans
may have introduced new animals to the Americas by using this
same land bridge, but I could not find any examples of this in
the first passage.
In The Rise and Fall of Mixed Husbandry in New England, I
thought that it was interesting to read about how the land was
increasingly tampered with as resources for cattle became
scarce. For example, “by the end of the colonial period, most of
the wetlands in towns like Weston had been rendered into
serviceable mowing ground” (112). Also having to do with Weston,
it’s “woodlands shrank until they comprised only 10 percent of
the landscape” (116).
My main question: did the increase in productivity actually put
the surrounding environment “on the road to ruin” (114)?
#Post#: 349--------------------------------------------------
Re: #7: "Bisons on the Great Plains" by Andrew Isenber
g and Brian Donahue, "The Rise and Fall of M
By: zwalker2020 Date: February 24, 2019, 8:35 pm
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Something interesting to me when it came to the first reading
was how horses were native to the Americas, but they weren't
reintroduced there until European contact with the Americas
happened. To me it's an example of how environmental history can
act in a very odd way sometimes. This reading also again
mentions the devastating diseases that were brought upon Native
Americans, which would help the European colonization of the
Americas... I can't help but wonder what would have happened if
there weren't such huge epidemics happening while this conquest
happened.
Responding to Alex's question: I think this "increase in
productivity" in the area definitely had some consequences, as
though the environment wasn't being treated as well as it
could've been by local Native Americans, Europeans moving into
the area and setting up settlements in the area had a negative
effect on the environment locally. I hesitate to say that this
completely ruined it though, at least permanently, since the
ecosystem seems to be doing fine today.
Question: Why did the "cultural changes" mentioned on page 114
happen? What were the major effects in the area?
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