Kiara Girkins- How Europeans Won Out

May 1, 2008

Many opponents of the idea that the conflicting habitus of the Native Americans and the European Settlers was the direct cause of the decline of wilderness as a sacred place would argue that wilderness never became less of a sacred place to Native Americans, but rather European thought simply became the majority. Although this argument may certainly have some validity, it does not account for the full ideals of the Native Americans. They believe that all land is sacred, and though they had a number of specific locations in which they performed certain rituals or considered to be completely forbidden, nature in general was not to be owned or destroyed. Europeans, as explained earlier, saw land as something to be possessed and was expendable. Europeans had extracted themselves from the give and take relationship of the circle of life, and put themselves on top of a theoretical hierarchy. So, what such an argument fails to consider, is that while Native Americans never stopped seeing wilderness as sacred, the quantity of such land leftover after European settlement was greatly decreased. And the very definition of habitus is the way one lives within a particular habitat, so as the two differing habitus of the Native Americans and the Europeans fought for priority within a single habitat, the conflict between the two led to the downfall of wilderness as a sacred place when the Europeans habitus won out.