Compare And Contrast The Native American View Of Nature

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Nature causes life, beautiful scenery, and a place for humans to live. Nature also causes death, sickness, and worldwide disasters. One can view nature with an optimistic or pessimistic outlook. Some people go through life by taking nature for granite and not realizing that they live at the mercy of nature. Comparatively, there are groups of people who view the nature with all the beauty it provides. The Native Americans’ treated nature with great respect; however, the Europeans did not hold nature in a high regard. The Native American cosmology allowed the land and other living creatures to be treated with great spiritual respect and with the notion that nature is more important than man. The first Europeans who came to the New World thought of land as a place to make profit and living …show more content…

The Europeans believed that the land was there so people can make a profit. “Seeking riches, resources, and trading opportunities…” (Gillon 53). They also believed that living creatures were on Earth so they could have food. The Europeans did not think of nature as if it was a spirit, they thought of nature as a place for people to make money, live, and eat. When the Europeans first settled in the New World they did not understand that the Native Americans knew how to manage the environment. The Europeans were faced with many starving years and many freezing winters. Eventually they lived in harmony with the Native Americans after they requested the help of the Natives even though their methods and cultures were so different. “[The colonizers] might have been completely perished if the Indians nearby had not helped by bringing food,” (Gillon 54). The Indians helped to Europeans through the three years (1606-1609) by giving them food. The Europeans treated the land as a place to strictly make profit and not as a spiritual

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