Birthstones?

These are fun: stone monuments that mark a birthplace, rather than a grave.

Peoples of a Spacious Land

In Peoples of a Spacious Land, Gloria Main summarizes the historiography of the 17th-century New England family from the 1980s to the present. In general, she is attempting to provide a broad overview rather than make strong, original arguments. Where she does argue, Main supports those authors who have challenged the idea that Puritans were stern patriarchs, preferring to portray the Puritan family in New England as loving, cooperative, and resourceful in the face of unexpected challenges. Rather than a well-organized colony dominated by a powerful elite, Main emphasizes the improvised nature of New England’s development as residents responded to local environmental, political, and economic situations.
Main supplements her summary with readings from the diaries of leading men such as Samuel Sewall, Cotton Mather, and John Winthrop, as well as those of some lesser-known colonists. Main does not attempt to analyze these sources in depth — rather, she uses them to illustrate the arguments made by other historians.
I do not wish to imply that this book is without merit. In fact, it is very useful because it condenses the arguments made by Ulrich, Thompson, Fischer, Allen, Demos, Cronon, Anderson, Bailyn, and many others (including anthropologists/archaeologists who have studied pre-contact Native Americans) into a readable overview. This would be an excellent text to use as an introduction to New England history because it touches on so many of the debates in the realms of environmental, economic, and family history (it is noticeably light on religion and politics).
My major criticism of Peoples of a Spacious Land is that the promise implied by the plural “Peoples” is never realized. Although Main declares that her work “compares English to native ways in order to explore the influence of cultural values,” most discussion of Native Americans seems overly speculative and is not well integrated into the book. At times, Main seems to be struggling to find something to say about any Indian group (at times extrapolating possible features of Narragansett culture by mining scholarship on other groups, including modern natives of Paraguay) just to fit her initial framework. These pieces seem tacked on and are not very useful. She does not really discuss how English observation of Indian habits might have shaped the colonists’ thinking about themselves and their new home and vice versa. Instead, the reader is left to compare the cultural norms of the two groups, but without any meaningful discussion of how they might have interacted in the 17th century.

Changes in the Land

It's been a while since I posted about my reading. Today, I have William Cronon's Changes in the Land: Indians, Colonists, and the Ecology of New England (1983), one of the most important works of environmental history.

Page 123:

Two major consequences followed when snow melted on cleared lands. For one, the longer retention of snow in forested areas acted to keep fires from spreading in the early months of spring; cleared lands were thus more susceptible to the burning colonists used to remove woody vegetation from them. More importantly in the long run, because the snow acted as a blanket maintaining soil temperatures, snow removal meant that soil froze to depths that it rarely had when forested.

Cronon describes how Native Americans and English colonists altered their environment, which was simultaneously undergoing natural changes. Changes in the Land was (and is) an important book for several reasons, including its disruption of the idea that Native Americans did not modify the landscape and its discussion of how Indians and colonists misunderstood each others' relationships with the land. In addition, this book speaks across disciplines, which is something the we Am Civvers always like.

In addition to its useful arguments and clear writing, Changes in the Land is a recipient of the VPI Grad Student Seal of Approval, which is awarded only to books that make their points in fewer than 250 pages. At 170 pages, it is a light morning's worth of reading.

The Middle Ground

Today, I am reading The Middle Ground: Indians, Empires, and Republics in the Great Lakes Region, 1650-1815 by Richard White (1991).
Page 123 is taken up by a large image, so here is page 124:

Indian hunters shifted to seeking the so-called menues pelleteries and, more significantly, to trading deerskins and bearskins, although initially there was not much demand for either. In 1726 Intendant DuPuy suggested importing leather workers or finding some way for the army to use the skins which otherwise would either be smuggled to New York or traded there directly by the Indians. Although the Louisiana posts sought deerskins, the Canadians took them only from necessity.

I'm just getting started, but it looks good. I'll let you know how it goes as I read more.