1. In 1925, a Wintu woman, Kate Luckie, lamented the attitudes of white settlers toward the earth:

"When the Indians use rocks they take little round ones for their cooking. The white people dig long deep tunnels. . . . Everywhere the white man has touched [the world] it is sore. It looks sick." (Major Problems in American Environmental History, p. 261)

In what specific ways did Euramerican settlers and their mining technologies transform the California environment? Evaluate the results from the perspective of a Native Californian Indian.

2. Describing California in his book Sunset Land, (Boston, 1870), John Todd prophetically anticipated the use and development of various resource belts in California from an imaginary vantage point atop the Sierra Nevada.

"Let us . . . take our stand on the Nevada, and look around. As you look north or south, you see the ridge and the jagged peaks. . . . These mountains bear up great forests, without which the railroad could never have been built . . .Now let the eye turn west. You see a . . . strip of magnificent pine forests. . . No finer pine timber than that which grows on this belt need be desired. . . .Then comes . . . the auriferous or gold bearing belt. It has gold under the soil, and the most wonder fruit-bearing power above the soil . . . . I do not believe a more wonderful belt, of the same extent, can be found on the face of the globe. . . .Irrigation must and will come into use more and more. . . . There are over two hundred lakes and ponds, natural reservoirs, where the waters are stored up--enough to turn a vast territory into a garden fair as Eden."

Imagine that the following historical actors are standing with Todd atop the Sierra Nevada contemplating the use and development of California's resource belts: (1) Bighorn sheep, 1700-1800, (2) Native American, 1830-1925, (3) Chinese Miner, 1849-1900, (4) Farmer-Irrigationist, 1870-1920, (5) Resource Conservationist, 1870-1920, (6) Wilderness Preservationist, 1870-1920, (7) Ecologist, 1930-1990. Choose five of the above actors (real or fictional), and paying close attention to the historical period in which each lived or worked, write an essay addressing the following questions:

a. What ecological, economic, social, and/or political assumptions underlay the use each made of the land and resources described by Todd? Consider such concepts as differing ecological theories, modes of production and reproduction, the Homestead and Reclamation Acts, laissez faire economics, government regulation, individual or communal property, public versus private land use, reciprocity, and so on.

b. What major attitudes (or ideologies) toward the American environment are exemplified by each of these five patterns of land use? Consider such ideas as: ecological imperialism, the Jeffersonian agrarian ideal, manifest destiny, the Garden of Eden, animism, organicism, mechanism, chaotic ecology, and so on.

c. Considering the interests of these actors and the ecological fate of the resource belts as they were actually developed, propose your own comprehensive land-use plan for the future.

3. Write a brief history of the Great Plains from the standpoint of the bison, drawing on the documents and essays in Chapter 9.

4. In 1893, Frederick Jackson Turner made the following observation about the westward movement: "Stand at Cumberland Gap and watch the procession of civilization, marching single file--the buffalo following the trail to the salt springs, the Indian, the fur-trader and hunter, the cattle-raiser, the pioneer farmer--and the frontier has passed by." (Major Problems in American Environmental History, p. 346). Write an essay on the environmental history of the Great Plains, addressing the following questions:

a. Discuss the technologies, the legislation, and the attitudes and ideologies that facilitated settlement of the prairies and plains in the nineteenth century.

b. What immdediate and long term ecological effects resulted from the impact of the westward movement on the prairies and plains?

c. What were the responses of ecologists and settlers to these changes in the land?

5. Assess the usefulness of Frederick Jackson Turner's frontier thesis (Major Problems in American Environmental History, pp. 345-347) to an understanding of environmental history in the light of the experiences of men and women on the mining, ranching, and farming frontiers of the far West and Great Plains since the 1840s.

6. Compare the roles and experiences of different ethnic groups (such as native, black, Asian-, and European Americans) with respect to the environment for a given time period (fifty years, for example) in a given region (such as the Cotton South, the Great Plains, or the California gold fields). Discuss the ways in which representatives of each group perceived, used, managed and/or conserved the environment.

7. What in your view accounts for the split between resource conservationists and wilderness preservationists in the early twentieth-century? Draw on the documents and essays in Chapters 10 and 11 in framing your answer.

8. Write an analytical or comparative essay on the responses to nature of one or more American nature writers (such as Cooper, Thoreau, Muir, Austin, or Bird), conservationists (such as Pinchot, Roosevelt, Leopold, or Carson) and artists (such as Audubon, Cole, Durand, Bierstadt, or Catlin).

9. American westward expansion involved the exploitation of natural resources. Eventually, several nuanced responses to exploitation emerged. The differences between Gifford Pinchot, John Muir, Aldo Leopold, and Rachel Carson exemplify different preconceptions of the relationship between humans and the natural environment.

a. Give some examples of natural resource exploitation that accompanied westward expansion from the mid-nineteenth to the early twentieth centuries.

b. Discuss the emergence and growth of a conservation impulse. Provide information regarding the political and/or social circumstances that gave rise to the thought and works of Pinchot, Muir, Leopold, and Carson.

c. Analyze the individual approaches of these four conservationists to humanity's relationship with the natural environment. Where is each located on the homocentric-ecocentric ethical spectrum? To what extent do their views reflect a mechanical or organic worldview?

10. In 1947, Gifford Pinchot defined conservation as "the use of natural resources for the greatest good of the greatest number for the longest time." (Major Problems in American Environmental History, p. 357)

In 1949, Aldo Leopold stated in his "Land Ethic," "Examine each question in terms of what is ethically and esthetically right, as well as what is economically expedient. A thing is right when it tends to preserve the integrity, stability, and beauty of the biotic community. It is wrong when it tends otherwise." (Major Problems, p. 458)

Discuss these two statements'

a. philosophical similarities and differences;

b. social, economic, and scientific origins;

c. implications and consequences for environmental policy.

11. Drawing on the documents and essays in chapters 10, 11, 14, and 15 of Major Problems in American Environmental History, characterize the similarities and differences between the environmental policies of the Progressive Era (1900-1916), the New Deal Era (1930s and '40s), and the contemporary environmental movement (1960s-present). In your answer consider underlying factors such as (a) economic expectations, (b) social goals, and (c) class, race, and gender differences, as well as explicit policies.

12. Drawing on chapters 8-15 of Major Problems in American Environmental History, write an essay on the differences between urban and regional environmental history. Refer to specific examples in your answer and use either the Great Plains or the California Gold Rush as an example of regional environmental history. Questions you may wish to consider in your answer are: Do urban and regional histories require the same or a different definition of environment? Do the meanings of "ecology" and "ecological impacts" differ in the two cases? What kinds of resources are involved in each case? Are forms of production, reproduction, and consciousness similar or different in the two cases? Are differences in technologies significant? How do the impacts on and contributions of racial, ethnic, and gender groups differ? What perspectives or narrative plots might be represented in your two histories?

13. In the year 2000, a group of city planners holds a convention to discuss the founding of Central City, USA, located on a plain near a mountain range in a region of untapped resources inhabited only by nomadic Indians. The planners call on a group of environmental historians to remind them of past dynamic relationships between cities and their regional environments. The papers presented by the environmental historians at the convention are all drawn from the documents and essays in Major Problems in American Environmental History, Chapters 8-15.

The first historian eulogizes the natural resources that will flow into Central City when extracted from the surrounding region and the role the city will play in promoting development in the countryside. She cites as examples the development of California's gold and lumber in building San Francisco and Great Plains meat and grain in stimulating Chicago's growth, detailing how these commodities were produced, who produced them, and how they were transported to the city. Her history emphasizes progress, growth, and the enhancement of living standards through the use of natural resources.

The second historian discusses the city's potential internal environmental problems, citing its need to obtain clean water and power from the nearby mountains, and to maintain clean air and clean streets. Using examples of pollution and reform in American cities, he presents specific examples of urban environmental and human problems and attempted solutions.

The third historian discusses the ecological relationships between the proposed city and its region, defining ecology, and pointing out specific examples of past impacts on the regional environments of California and the Great Plains as a result of transforming nature into commodities. Her history is declensionist, stressing the costs borne by the environment, including animals, plants, water, and soils, and by native Americans.

Determined to learn from the environmental problems of the past, the planners propose solutions, again citing three or four specific examples from the past, such as conserving and sustaining natural resources, preserving city and regional parks, maintaining human health, passing new legislation, and rethinking the meanings of nature and culture.

As a reporter at the convention, who has a special sensitivity to the historical roles of women and minorities, you must write a synopsis of the convention's findings for your local newspaper. Your editiors have limited you to a maximum of ten typed pages. You decide to devote 2-3 pages to each of the three historians' papers and two to three pages to the planners' proposed solutions. For reference you note the page numbers from Major Problems in American Environmental History at the end of each paragraph.

14. Assess the relative importance of culture and environment in shaping American environmental history since 1840. Has one been a more significant force than the other? Why or why not?

In your answer, you may want to consider such cultural factors as: old world and east coast roots of opinion, the role of government, male-female roles and values, egalitarianism, the private ownership of property, citizen definitions of the quality of life, and so on. You may want to consider such environmental forces as: the challenge of the frontier, the wilderness of North America, the laws of nature, ecological relationships, environmental determinism, and so on.

14. "Succession . . . .is the basic organic process of vegetation, which results in the adult or final form of this complex organism. All the stages which precede the climax are stages of growth. . . . In short, the process of organic development is essentially alike for the individual and the community." Frederic Clements, 1916. (Major Problems in American Environmental History, p. 447)

"The weakness of Clements is. . . that vegetation is an organism and therefore must obey the laws of development of what we commonly know as organisms. . . . But the more fundamental conception is, as it seems to me, the whole system (in the sense of physics). . . . We cannot separate [organisms] from their environment, with which they form one physical system." A. G. Tansley, 1935. (Major Problems, pp. 450, 451)

What differing approaches to the science of ecology are exemplified in the ideas of Frederic Clements and A. G. Tansley? What differences in environmental policies concerning the dust bowl arose from each of the two approaches?

16. In 1969 Eugene Odum wrote "Ecological succession may be defined [as] an orderly process of community development . . . It culminates in a stabilized ecosystem" (p. 459) In 1985, S.T.A. Pickett and P.S. White wrote, "[Patch dynamics] forms an alternative to equilibrium concepts of the . . . functioning of ecosystems. . . . Equilibrium landscapes would . . . seem to be the exception, rather than the rule. (Major Problems, p. 460) What differing environmental policies result from these two differing views of ecology? As an environmental policy analyst in the Environmental Protection Agency in 1990 how would you approach governmental policy formation in the light of these differing approaches to ecological science?

17. American society was originally premised on the belief that unfettered private appropriation and use of natural resources would result in the greatest benefit to both individuals and society as a whole. In the 19th century, resources (including land) in the United States were variously viewed as a means toward private individual gain (philosophy of laissez-faire economics) or toward the "benefit of the many" not for the private profit of the few (under both progressive conservation and wilderness preservation philosophies). As Jack Lewis puts it, the debate over the natural environment is "nothing less than the role of the federal government at large, and how that role should be defined and redefined as the nation's needs change." (Major Problems in American Environmental History, pp. 511-512). Policies of the federal government have supported both laissez faire capitalism and environmental regulation of resources for the public good.

a. Define and differentiate between the two policies (laissez faire and environmental regulation),

b. Discuss at least three specific examples of each policy (Suggestions: westward expansion: mining, cattle ranching, prairie farming; the progressive conservation movement; wilderness preservation; urban ecology; the ecology movement.)

c. Discuss the limitations of each policy for the democratic allocation of resources. How is democracy reinforced, expedited, thwarted, or betrayed in the context of resource policies and actions by both government and individuals?

18. "When we describe patterns and processes of human behavior within an ecosystem, we seem always to tell stories about them. . . . On the one hand we can narrate [Great] Plains history as a story of improvement . . toward an ending that is happier, richer, freer, better--than the beginning. On the other hand, we can tell stories in which the plot line eventually falls toward an ending that is more negative--sadder, poorer, less free, worse--than the place where the story began. The one group of plots might be called "progressive," . . . the other might be called tragic or "declensionist." "William Cronon, "Telling Stories About Ecology," Major Problems in American Environmental History, pp. 324, 325.

Reread William Cronon's essay (Chapter 9, pp. 323-336). Then choose a chapter of Major Problems, other than Chapters 1 or 9. Using the documents and essays from that chapter (and those from other chapters if relevant) first write either a progressive environmental history (a history of achievement and progress) or a declensionist environmental history (a history of crisis and decline) of the chapter. Your history should be based on specific individuals, natural entities, ecological processes, and factual details from the chapter you have chosen. You are not expected to do additional research in order to answer the question.

Then, write a critique of your progressive or declensionist history. Consider such questions as the following: What are the underlying assumptions of your narrative? What or whom have you omitted? Might the omitted materials change the plot of the story you told? If so, how? Are environmental histories necessarily declensionist? Are there plots other than progress or decline that can organize environmental histories? Do you agree with the view that "narrative is so basic to our cultural beliefs that we automatically impose it on . . . reality?" (p. 332) Why or why not? What are the strengths and limitations of viewing environmental history as narrative (as opposed to the interpretations and models presented in Chapter 1).

19. "To date most studies of the American response to nature have focused on the problematic, ambivalent experience of men. . . . Survival in a hostile natural environment is an ego-gratifying achievement and feeds the achievement-oriented male psyche, enabling men to return to civilization and improve their culture." Vera L. Norwood, "Heroines of Nature," Environmental Review, 8, no. 1 (Spring 1984), p. 35.

Use specific examples from Major Problems in american Environmental History to elaborate on and/or to criticize Norwood's statement.

20. Having read numerous approaches to writing environmental history in chapter 1 and throughout the book, which approaches seem to you to be the best? Defend your choices. What are your own criteria for writing environmental history?

21. Having read and considered environmental history from the perspectives of the documents and essays in Major Problems in American Environmental History, please rewrite your own personal environmental history.