Difference Between European And North American Settlers

When the Europeans and African settlers arrived to North America, they were welcomed with an abundance of untouched resources readily available for the settlers personal use. The settlers would take advantage of this opportunity and would claim the resources immediately. Capital that would grab the interest of the settlers would be land, wood, indigenous species, and mineral resources. Settlers saw these resources as an opportunity to increase personal wealth and took advantage of what they had available to them. Settlers, with profit being the main motivation, gutted these lands of their resources without care of environmental and ecological changes. The two main industries that contributed greatly to these changes are hunting and farming. Capitalism drove
Overhunting was a major issue when the Europeans arrived to North America, with the North American beaver being most affected by the appearance of the settlers. In the Sixteenth hundreds, fashion was in demand with fur being required to fulfill this market [1]. Beaver’s were then hunted by hundreds of men, leaving the population to shrink from year to year. With innovating steel traps invented by the Europeans coming into effect, the beaver population reduced drastically. In 1801, it was noted that 2868 pounds of beaver fur was obtained by trapping parties. With no regulations of the hunting of beaver, the trappers killed the beavers to an excessive amount with a significant decrease of beaver fur leaving the trappers with only 908 pounds of fur in 1808 [2]. Since beaver fur was in demand, settlers took advantage of the quantity of beaver available with the only one thing on their mind, profit. The beaver play a vital role in the environment by creating dams