Columbia Exchange: A Big Synthesis or A Narrow Topic? Part Two

Columbian Exchange: A Big Synthesis or A Narrow Topic?

Virginia Dejohn Anderson, Creatures of Empire: How Domestic Animals Transformed Early America (New York: Oxford University Press, 2004)

Marcy Norton, Sacred Gifts, Profane Pleasures: A History of Tobacco and Chocolate in the Atlantic World (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2008)

Like Crosby, both Anderson and Norton focus on the colonial encounters, although Anderson pays more attention to how colonial Americans colonized in North America and Norton mainly discusses Spain and its colonies in the New World. Focusing on the cultural conflict between Native Americans and the colonial Americans on domesticating animals, Anderson talks about how colonial Americans were different from Native Americans in understanding animals, property and husbandry. In the town of Duxbury, Massachusetts, Anderson finds a granite monument, in which these words were engraved:

Site of nook gate. Here a palisade was erected across the nook in 1634. This palisade was a high fence to prevent cattle from straying and probably to keep the Indians out.[1]

Anderson assumes the differences of domesticating animals between Native Americans and colonial Americans, as well as their understanding of property were the core for understanding early American history. In Anderson’s opinion, colonial Americans in the 17^th century wanted to construct their own fence to keep “the Indians out” and prevent “cattle from straying.” While for Native Americans, they were accustomed to stray their cattle and did not like to set fence to protect their own ownerships. The English were interested in domesticating animals, while Native Americans preferred to hunt. For colonial Americans, taming a wild animal could help them to have their ownership of the animals. While for Native Americans, they actually did not have consciousness to ownership and property. Due to these cultural differences on treating livestock and animals, as well as their understanding of ownership, Native Americans and colonial Americans were in conflict with each other on settling with animals, which finally caused the King Philip’s War, the Pequot War and Native Americans were finally forced to the far west. For Anderson, she assumes the history of colonization of Europeans in North America was the history of Native Americans who were forced to the west due to their cultural differences.     

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[1] Virginia Dejohn Anderson, Creatures of Empire: How Domestic Animals Transformed Early America (New York: Oxford University Press, 2004), 2.