ABSTRACT
Labor in the earth was the pathway to the recovery of Eden. The New World was the new garden. For over three hundred years, hope of Recovery helped to propel settlement and “improvement” of the American continent. Following the Lockean ideal, Europeans mixed their labor with the soil, claiming the product as private property Euroamerican men acted to reverse the decline of nature initiated by Eve, turning it into an ascent back to the garden. Using science, technology, and biblical imagery, they first changed the eastern forests and then the western deserts into cultivated gardens. Sanctioned by the Genesis origin story, they subdued the “wilderness,” replenished the earth, and appropriated Indian homelands as free lands for settlement. Mercantile capitalism cast America as the site of natural resources, Africa as the source of enslaved human resources, and Europe as the base of resource management. Timber, barrel staves, animal hides, herbal medicines, tobacco, sugar, and cotton were extracted from nature as part of the great project of “improving” the land. In this chapter I will show how American men, as fallen Adam, became the heroic agents who transformed and redeemed fallen nature and suggest some possibilities for partnerships between people and the land.
