Changes in the land: Indians, colonists and the ecology of New England.

"In this work, Cronon demonstrated the impact on the land of the widely disparate conceptions of ownership held by Native Americans and English colonists. English law objectified land, making it an object of which the purchaser had ownership of every aspect. Native American law conceived only the possibility of usufruct rights, the right, that is, to own the nuts or fish or wood that land or bodies of water produced, or the right to hunt, fish or live on the land, there was no possibility of owning the land itself. The second innovative aspect of Cronon's work was to reconceptualize Native Americans as actors capable of changing the ecosystems with which they interacted. Native Americans could, in Cronon's recounting, alter the nature of the forests or exterminate species. Nevertheless, because their technological capabilities were limited and, therefore, native populations were small, their impact on the land was limited. For these reasons, "the shift from Indian to European dominance entailed important changes" (Wikipedia_