CHAPTER 2

NATIVE AMERICAN ECOLOGY AND EUROPEAN CONTACT

Chapter Outline

I. Pueblos and Spanish in the Southwest

II. Micmacs and French in the Northeast

Discussion Questions

1. What differences between Indian and European approaches to gift giving and trade do the documents and essays reveal? What are some of the environmental consequences of the two approaches?

2. What ecological roles did animal spirits, rain chiefs, and shamans play in the Pueblo and Micmac societies? Were they the same or different in the two cases? How were the roles of these spirits changed by Franciscan and Jesuit missionaries?

3. How might Donald Worster describe a Pueblo "hydraulic" mode of production? What critique might William Cronon make of this mode of production?

4. What components of Alfred Crosby's "portmanteau biota" did the Spanish introduce into Pueblo lands? How might these have altered the ecology of the region? By what other methods did the Spanish alter Pueblo life? What were the positive and negative consequences of these changes?

5. What specific differences in gender roles and power existed in Pueblo and Micmac society before the arrival of Europeans. In what ways did the advent of Europeans alter roles and power relations between the sexes?

6. Compare and contrast Ramón Gutiérrez's explanation of the transformation of Pueblo society under colonization with Calvin Martin's explanation of the transformation of Micmac society? To what extent do ecological and cultural differences in the two cases account for the different explanations? To what extent do the underlying assumptions made by the two historians account for the different explanations?