When God first created Earth, it was a place of freedom for all creatures. In fact, there wasn’t anything that appeared to have the desire to exercise their power over the land and all of its organisms. Even after the creation of man, as described in the Genesis, there was a natural balance of power. God created creatures to accompany Adam because he believed that “it is not good that man should be alone” (Genesis, 2), while He created the plants so that Adam could eat from them. However, after the woman, Eve, was deceived by the serpent, life on Earth changed drastically. Suddenly there was suffering and death, and man was forced to work the land in order to stay alive. It appears that man was supposed to live off the land, not control it and everything that lives off it as well.

Nonetheless, in the future humans began to create civilizations. Places where the land was altered and “civilized.” The wilderness was no longer the place God once intended. In fact, it appears that humans began to think that the natural world, places that weren’t inhabited by humans was considered to be unfit for human presence. This point is present in A Narrative of the Captivity and Restoration of Mrs. Mary Rowlandson when she describes her trek across the country with the Native Americans. She constantly uses words that are associated with nature to describe evil. For example, she considered the swamp she was forced to cross as “a deep dungeon.” Why would she consider something within nature in such a way, especially when the one she called on for help throughout her whole narrative was God? God was the one who created the swamp, and yet she despises it. She wants the comforts of the man-made place. A place of civilization full of European settlers. Does Mary Rowlandson believe that human civilizations are better than what God originally created? In fact, she even goes on to say that she had to “travel with them into the vast and desolate wilderness.” Ultimately “desolate” means to be empty of inhabitants and visitors. It is with certainty that it can be said the wilderness is not an empty place. It is an ecosystem, full of animals and plants. It appears that Mary Rowlandson disregards His creations and everything that He spent the seven days creating as unimportant.

This same idea is present in Letters From an American Farmer: Letter III- What Is An American, by J. Hector St John De Crevecoeur. Crevecoeur clearly believes in the neatness that society creates. This can be seen when he states, “Here he sees the industry of his native country displayed in a new manner, and traces in their works the embryos of all the arts, sciences, and ingenuity which nourish in Europe. Here he beholds fair cities, substantial villages, extensive fields, an immense country filled with decent houses, good roads, orchards, meadows, and bridges, where an hundred years ago all was wild, woody and uncultivated!” Clearly from this quote Crevecoeur believes that the work of man is a beautiful thing, even though the human race, especially the white race, is ultimately destroying everything that God made. Was it really His intention for humans to use the land as if it is something that is conquerable and powerless? For man to refer to it as something that should be altered or changed completely? Nevertheless, the place that God created is no longer in existence. In its place is a site filled with man-made civilizations, where very little is influenced by the Earth that once existed.