world as so much stuff to be used, resources of primarily utilitarian value for knowledge and for material wealth. Europeans saw beavers and envisioned a new fashion for the middle class and the elite. They saw deer and buffalo and envisioned beautiful coats and furnishings for the home. They saw natural, innocent people and imbued them with disease and substance abuse, closing business deals with plenty of alcohol for all the participants. Millions died from smallpox, and drug and alcohol programs are active today, still trying to heal the ravages of substance abuse and the losses it brings. The Native American population did not have immunities to European disease and substance use.
The European sees life around him with the thought of Cogito, ergo sum, "I think, therefore I am" (Rosenstand, 60). This intellectual challenge propels the conqueror to see nature as an enemy to be overcome. It is a basic western attitude that has become somewhat removed from consciousness as generations have moved away from agrarian lifestyles, but
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