Coexisting in Colonial Northern New England

There were inarguably cultural distinctions between the lifestyles of northern New England Indians and Puritan colonists that explain some of their more hostile interactions. From religious to economic beliefs, there were disconnects between the two populations that ignorance and inexposure only complicated in working to achieve compromises. Puritan colonists in New England found coexisting with early-contact Native American groups difficult because of their different beliefs concerning their definition of and relationship with property, which extended to their ecological practices related to agriculture.

One of the main factors that complicated the Puritans coexistence with the New England Indians was the difference in definition of property. The Puritans lent a more concrete meaning to the word and associated property with an individual and his family whereas the Indians had a looser interpretation that emphasized communal usage privileges over actual ownership. According to the Puritans, property meant possessing certain rights and privileges to a plot of land that the community recognizes through visible boundaries such as fences. One cause for this cultural distinction was that the New England Indians, especially those living in northern New England, were primarily migratory as opposed to the Puritans who tended to remain in one place once they settled it. As evidenced by the enclosure movement, colonists advocated setting discernable boundaries. The Puritans believed in stewardship, the idea that they had a religious duty to care for the earth. Along with this concept was the idea of the Protestant work ethic, which meant actively trying to improve one's land in order to increase soil quality, crop yield, and the overall property value. To them, success was an indicator of religious bona fide, so they upheld successful farmers as "visible saints." Puritans also sought to tame what William Bradford described as the "hideous and desolate" New England wilderness because they wanted to return to an Edenic time, as alluded to in the lines of their contemporary pastoral poetry.

The New England Indians had a very different concept of property that held that humans only had a privilege to use the land for their survival, not that they necessarily owned it. Native Americans did not establish visible boundaries as the Puritans did because they supported the concept of alien ability---a tribe's exclusive use to the land in terms of hunting and fishing rights, for example. The northern New England Indians were generally migratory and therefore had liberal interpretations of boundaries (by European standards) whereas the southern New England Indians tended to remain in once place until their crops exhausted the soil, which usually meant eight to ten years. Puritans saw the fields that the Indian women tilled as the only Indian owned property because it was the only land that the Indians sought to "improve". Puritans viewed the Indian's relationship with the land as primitive and incomplete because the Indians lacked the covenant that the Puritans as Christians held. This belief even became the Puritans' justification for seizing Indian land and claiming it as their own; they did not consider the land they took as truly Indian owned. John Cotton said, "In a vacant soyle, hee that taketh possession of it, and bestoweth culture and husbandry upon it, his Right it is," (Cronon 57), emphasizing the Puritan right to claim that land. Since Indians relied upon oral contracts and could not understand the Puritans' written ones, there were often disagreements over who rightfully owned the land, especially when the two cultures had such different definitions of property in the first place. The Indians may have given Puritan groups permission to hunt or fish on certain land but that was not quite the same as giving the land to them.

The two different definitions of property further complicated coexistence when trying to define the proper relationship with the land: the Puritans perceived their landed property as a source for commodities and a commodity in itself whereas Indians saw it as a source for their subsistence. They embraced a culture of expansion and wanted to acquire as much land as possible in order to accumulate more commodities, such as beaver pelts, which were popular in Europe. The difference between how the Puritans saw beaver pelts and how the Indians (at least initially) saw beaver belts, for example, illustrates the distinction between valuing something as a commodity and valuing something for its ability to help one physically survive. Commodities are exchanged on a market for money and translate into other items---beaver pelts, as the Puritans knew, could be traded for numerous other things. Before the Indians learned of the European economy system, they prized beaver because it kept them warm during cold winters. Indians did not operate on the same economic system that the Europeans did. They relied upon a complex system of reciprocal obligations and kinship ties. Indians were more concerned about prestige goods and later interested in the hunting trade but that came about because of European influence.

The purpose of the land that each culture defined led to two separate ecological practices in the form of agricultural: the Indian way and the Puritan way. The northern New England Native Americans relied mainly on hunting and gathering. They may have had small, temporary crops but livestock was too cumbersome for them to care for when they had to move around a regular basis. The southern New England Indians had more well-established planting grounds but they were still less permanently settled than the Puritans. In contrast, the colonists took pride in working the land and, as they viewed it from a Genesis perspective, allowing animals to serve them so they celebrated livestock and even used cattle as a status symbol. Because these two peoples claimed such different lifestyles, they had very different impacts upon the land. The life these Indians led without prominent agriculture affected the environment as much as the life the colonists led with it.
The ecological impacts of Indian and Puritan agriculture can be assessed through the influence of crops and influence of agriculture. Northern New England Indians generally did not grow crops, which meant that they probably had a minimal impact upon their environment's soil. There is evidence, however, that they burned forests perhaps to clear paths for their hunting expeditions and the ash from that practice probably did change the soil to a degree. But southern New England Indians and colonists were directly responsible for exhausting the soil because they grew crops. Apparently the Indians were less aware, or perhaps simply less concerned, with increasing the longevity of soil fertility because they just left once the soil was useless. Since the Puritans were more likely to stay in one place, they took measures to ensure that their soil lasted longer. The Puritans were still guilty of soil compression due to the weight of cattle, as well as of bringing invasive European species brought through their livestock's feces. European livestock were, understandably, accustomed to eating European plants. When the colonists brought them over, the animals carried European seeds in their feces, which they then plopped onto New England land. The European plants often decimated native plants which had an impact on the local food chain. That decimation meant less food for the native animals that depended on those plants. Any species of animal that depended solely on a threatened plant was doomed because their food supply was disappearing. The invasive plants may have also exhausted local soil more quickly than local plants.

The introduction of invasive species and other accidental environmental consequences of the Puritans' arrival show that ultimately Mother Nature has the upper-hand despite what humans may believe about their impact upon the environment. Man has a certain amount of influence but he hardly controls the destiny of plants and animals. Instead the Puritans and the Indians were subject to Nature's rulings. They were not fully aware of their actions' ecological implications. This ignorance probably only made it more difficult for the Indians and the Puritans to co-exist, on top of their cultural differences in terms of viewing property.