Indians had a physical relationship with their environment, and they depended on it entirely. Yes, both Europeans and Native Americans altered their environment, but the distinction between the two is the religious relationship with the animals and the environment the natives possessed. The native believed that if they were going to live, something else, whether it be a plant or animal, was gonna die. To them, an animal was not nothing, it could take human form, think and react like humans. When a native kills an animal, one must ask for forgiveness right away or one might be cursed for the rest of one’s life. In the Native American religious system, everything has a power or spirituality to it. Silver argues that “their belief in the spirituality and human volition of plants and animals explains why the natives did not keep livestock. Because Indians believed wild animals capable of retaliation if wronged, the natives might have been unwilling to capture the beasts and force them to the yoke.” The colonists, however, did keep livestock, but they, of course, were too cheap to feed them. Due to the “difficulties involved in clearing forests for pastures, most planters and herders simply branded their stock and turned them out into the surround forests, fields and swamps. Left to fend for themselves in the southern woods, livestock frequently reverted to the wild... Later colonists, who sought to confine woods-reared cattle, found the beasts impossible to tame.” Therefore, the Native Americans were very dependent on keeping this balance intact. Native Americans new that animals should not be kept as pets. They should be allowed to roam around in the wild. It is very evident that when the Europeans tried to tame their livestock, they reverted back to their old ways. It was how it was supposed to be, the way nature entitled life to be. This balance was the Native Americans’ sort of innocence and when the Europeans came to America, they tempted them with pleasures and their balance was taken was in many ways ruined.

Native Americans have always had a close connection with their environment. They had to adapt their economics to their societies. Their religious beliefs kept them in balance and in harmony with the environment. The Indians had a daily exercise of obtaining of food, which was year-round. Their survival depended on the sun and the rain; without the sun, the crops would not grow to a healthy size, and without the rain, the crops would not get its nutrients. The Indians depended on many forms of getting their intake of food from the environment and instead of going from area to area they began to “confine their subsistence activities to a define territory. Although they moved from site to site fishing, hunting, or gathering wild foods, they depended on locally available resources and become more sedentary than their ancestors.” Native Americans did not just hunt, they also had a great farming system: “Throughout the region, Indians tended to use farming in conjunction with hunting and gathering, demonstrating a remarkable ability to blend agricultural innovation wi

Some topics in this essay:
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