Making Nature Sacred2 - Spencer Beeson

In the first chapter of Making Nature Sacred John Gatta refers to William Bradford’s famous Hideous and Desolate Wilderness. I thought the way Bradford viewed the new world was very interesting and I used this in my research paper. Bradford said, “These lands beckoned as particularly fruitful and fit for habitation because he considered them devoid of all civil inhabitants, where there are only savage and brutish men which range up and down, little otherwise than the wild beasts of the same.” And also “Besides, what could they see but a hideous and desolate wilderness, full of wild beasts and wild men” I found the way the colonists viewed the native Americans and the land interesting because it showed just how detached the civilized man has become from nature. How will humans treat their environment if they don’t consider themselves part of nature? I found this passage by Bradford to be insightful in how far back this separation between man and nature goes.